


Snake Stone

by MarquisdeHockey (SpacePunkStevie)



Series: Any God You Like [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon typical drug use, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Multi, Slow Burn, canon typical alcohol, neurodivergent characters, pansexual jack zimmermann, witch jack zimmermann
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 21:12:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13039497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpacePunkStevie/pseuds/MarquisdeHockey
Summary: Jack just wasn't the sort to believe that the universe hated him. The universe was vast, ancient, and presumably had better things to do that mess with an NCAA hockey player from Montreal. The universe, he believed, was entirely indifferent to him.No doubt whatever it was that had it out for him was on a much smaller scale.This is the story of Jack trying to maintain his determined single-mindedness to win the Stanley Cup throughout the crucial senior year, despite an endless parade of distractions. Like friendship and love, magic, the criminal justice system, the inherent fragility of human life, and that Halo song that he keeps getting stuck in his head.





	1. "Therefore it must be said that in no way does an angel, either good or bad, see with the eyes of its assumed body"

**Author's Note:**

> The reason that the gap was so long is that I was writing original fiction for NaNoWriMo and I was focusing on that. I am definitely going to finish this whole series, although no promises that it will be in a timely fashion, although I think that this may be my last long fanfic.

_And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,_

_When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,_

_When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,_

_A highwayman comes riding—_

_Riding—riding—_

_A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door._

 

_Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard._

_He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred._

_He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there_

_But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,_

_Bess, the landlord’s daughter,_

_Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair._

 

Jack finished the last two stanzas of _The Highwayman_ with more interest than he would actually be admitting any time soon. In these final lines, the lovers of the story are reunited as ghosts, either because Alfred Noyes had a strong interest in the supernatural, or because he couldn’t think of two more stanzas and just decided to repeat the first two again.

            **Jack:**                Since when did you start sending people poetry?

            **Shitty:**               I just thought you’d like this one

            **Shitty:**               You’ve got a lot of books about magic and stuff in your room

Sometimes, when he was feeling his most uncharitable, Jack thought that maybe Shitty was born with sharp eye and dull mind. It certainly wasn’t the truth – Shitty was nothing if not a genius – it was more that he didn’t seem to use that genius all the time.

            **Jack:**                I’m a witch, Shitty

He returned to what he was doing, which was eyeing with no small measure of suspicion the late birthday present that had just arrived in the mail; postmark: Las Vegas.

            **Shitty:**               Haha

Jack didn’t particularly feel like explaining, so instead he pasted the link to one of the more useful sites and sent it off, giving himself maybe five or ten minutes until Shitty understood.

It was definitely a present. It had the words “happy birthday” scrawled on the package, accompanied by what Jack personally thought was an extremely overzealous smiley face. This, he knew, was his own stupid fault. He was the one who performed some dubious research into social expectations, weighed up his and Kent’s relationship, and decided that a birthday present was probably in order. So, on or around the Fourth of July, Kent had received and old shoebox that Jack had taken the time to pack with all the (mostly stupid) things that his friend had liked the most about his time in Montreal.

And now Kent had returned the favour. Jack was mostly just hoping that it wasn’t a weapon of some sort.

With exaggerated care, he pried the package open at a corner and peeked inside.

Seemed safe.

So he reached in a tentative hand and drew out his gift; a glossy, heavily branded cardboard box from some sort of electronic store, it seemed.

For reasons best known to himself, Kent had decided to send Jack a pair of expensive over-ear headphones. The postit note attached to the front had another of those smiley faces next to the line “thought this might be useful”.

_Useful for what, Parse?_

In large letters, they announced themselves to be noise-cancelling, and Jack couldn’t imagine this would be anything but a hindrance in any of the adventures Kent was so fond of getting involved in.

He opened the box. Inside were, in fact, a pair of headphones. Jack wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but he still wasn’t following what Kent had been angling at with this gift. Nonetheless he tried them on, the hollow foam-ringed parts swallowing his ears entirely. They were comfortable, at least.

Then turned them on and the world stopped.

_Jesus fucking Christ on skates._

They were, in fact, noise cancelling. It was like standing too close to a soundproof wall, except so much worse. The headphones didn’t create quiet so much as they felt like the sound was being pulled out of Jack’s ears. Things weren’t _supposed_ to be this quiet. There was a void where all the tiny sounds of existence were supposed to be. He didn’t notice them normally, but he certainly noticed their absence.

The headphones were left in place for as long as he could bear, before being pulled off so Jack could neutralise that sickening sensory feeling.

His phone buzzed.

            **Shitty:**               Oh. Right. I’m sorry I laughed

            **Shitty:**               I didn’t realise what you meant

            **Shitty:**               I respect your religion

            **Shitty:**               Sorry

. _/

It was quiet by the river, but that had nothing to do with the river itself and everything to do with the Zimmermann experience in finding the quiet places.

His parents were on either side of him, occasionally saying annoying parental things about how they’ll miss him when he’s back at Samwell. In between this familial conversation, Jack automatically scanned his eyes along the plants in search of four-leaf clovers.

The river-dampness in the air caught the greenery and raised that supple scent. It reminded him of his room at Samwell on a warm evening, with his fragrant herbs in the sunlit patches. The clovers soon petered out, and Jack turned his attention to the thin margin of river stones. It was an idle sort of search, more habit than anything, and he was far from expecting a result when he caught sight of a shadow on a flat stone.

Without thinking, he bent down to retrieve the stone, and walked on with the weight of it in his palm. It was a dull grey thing, smooth, and warm from the sunlight it had been lying in. But for the hole through it a little off centre, it would have been perfect for skipping across the water.

‘What’s that?’

His mother was smiling back at him and he realised that he’d fallen a little behind. A few short strides, and he was once again between his parents and answering, ‘It’s called a snake stone. A stone with a naturally occurring hole in it. It’s… useful… for stuff.’ he finished lamely.

It was perhaps a little more commonly known as a hag stone, and “snake stone” was a term shared by a number of things, but Jack had chosen to call it the least weird of the two names on account of the fact that he was talking to his parents. He’d also chosen not to explain what it was _for_. He’d made it this far without actually saying the word “fairies” in front of either of them, and he fully intended to keep it up.

. _/

It was the night before he was due to leave for Boston, a senior now. With the full moon in the summer sky, Jack couldn’t help but think that the scene out of the window was being intentionally dramatic. The moonlight flooded the garden so well that it seemed merely to be daylight without the colour. Like an old movie. Like he was a character in Metropolis, lending his own craft to the distantly supernatural undertones of that bizarre film.

The light was falling on the pentagram hanging around his neck, and the moonstone shimmered in pale blues and greens. With the glow and the unnatural stillness and the anticipation of the morning, Jack figured it was a good night for not getting enough sleep.

So he fished the snake stone out of his pocket and lifted it to his eye to peer through.

And lowered it.

And raised it again, just to be sure.

Yep. He was right the first time. With a snake stone intercepting his gaze, the garden below him was _exactly the same_. This, despite the full moon. He noted this down in his book of shadows, because he was that kind of person, and resolved to test it again another time.

. _/

The plan didn’t crash, which was good. Jack and his anxiety has previously considered the possibility of him having to stop a plane crash, and came to the conclusion that he wasn’t all that keen for terrorist charges.

But there were worse things to consider. For instance; it was hotter in Boston than in had been in Montreal. The heat seemed to drift in lazily from the Atlantic and settle, like a heavy but invisible cloud, over the city. It was the time of year when the leaves refused to turn brown, but the grass long since had. It crinkled underfoot in a way that made Jack feel parched in sympathy.

He was far too Canadian for this shit.

Montreal was seeming further and further away as he got closer to the Haus. By the time the front door was closed, he was well and truly back.

_Senor year._

He moved further into the dwelling with his bags balanced awkwardly, and made a list in his head of all the things between him and his room that were just so peculiarly _Samwell_.

  1. His rule about not keeping unclaimed items of underwear within sight of the front door had been ignored.
  2. There were new curtains in the kitchen, which could only have been brought in by one person.
  3. Ransom and Bitty were doing squats in the living room.
  4. The air smelt distantly of white sage. That is to say, to anyone without witchy experience, it smelt of pot. Of the two herbs that could have been burnt in the recent past, he was willing to bet on which one it actually was.
  5. There was glitter on the floor. What it was from, he had no idea. Regardless, he carefully sidestepped it in the knowledge that just one touch would result in glitter appearing on his face at random times for months to come.
  6. As he ascended the stairs, he passed through a cold patch with he chose to interpret as a “welcome back” from their resident ghosts. (Here he made sure that he wasn’t being observed before testing the snake stone again, but nothing continued to occur).
  7. Bitty’s room was already a mess.
  8. There was a note on his bed purporting to be from Johnson, which read merely “Have fun this year. Wink.”



His bags were laid out on the bed for immediate unpacking and, with his hands now free, he turned the note over.

“P.S. Don’t worry, I don’t think the readers have thought to question how you keep a room full of herbs healthy without living here permanently.”

 _Well, that’s what I get for reading a note from Johnson, I suppose_.

And then he figured it was probably time to catch up with-

‘Bro!’

Shitty burst through the bathroom door wearing altogether too high a proportion of ironed clothes, and immediately had Jack lifted off his feet in a tight hug; a fairly impressive effort, given that Jack was taller than him.

‘Hey.’ Jack replied, hoping that Shitty didn’t notice the slight wheeze in his voice, ‘I didn’t realise you could do this.’

His feet touched the carpet again, and Shitty was looking at him, grinning so widely that his moustache curved upwards around his nose.

‘Senior year.’

They shared a nervous moment, heavy with all the uncertainties of the future.

‘I know.’

‘No more Samwell.’ Shitty mused, and all at once Jack felt something heavy settle in his gut. All this time just trying to get to the NHL, and there he was being blindsided by how much the prospect of leaving this college seemed to hurt.

 _What the hell?_ Jack internally scolded his emotions, _Where did that come from? Knock it off._

‘We’re going to win this year.’

The response was a hand on his upper arm, ‘Don’t make promises like that, bro.’

‘Oh. Okay-’

‘Make promises like “I will attend an epikegster before my time at Samwell is up”.’

Shitty watched Jack expectantly, and he gave his friend a few seconds of waiting before replying, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

‘Aw, you don’t mean that-’

‘C’mon, out of my room, we’ve both got to unpack. You especially. I don’t want you claiming that you “can’t find any clothes” or something.’

‘Can I complain about the socially constructed confinement of clothing?’

‘Only from where I can’t see you.’

Jack found himself waving his hands about as if he were shooing along a gaggle of small children, but it seemed to work on Shitty anyway, and a few moments later he was alone in his room.

_What the hell was that?_

He waited for whatever emotion had reared its head to admit its mistake and go sheepishly back into its hole. Instead that feeling grew, dark and thick, and suggested that it may in fact have the ability to envelop him if it should so choose.

Time to run some diagnostics. He dropped down on his bed and ran a few things through his mind.

 _Samwell_. _The campus. Geese. Hockey._

Thankfully, that feeling seemed to be placated by this. He continued.

 _Shitty. Lardo. Bitty, and his incessant baking._ Good. This was going well. _Ransom and Holster. I wonder which of them will be captain when I leave-_

That last bit made him wrap his arms around himself in protection from that new specimen of despair. This, he knew with ruthless certainty, was going to prove inconvenient.

But before he could dwell too long on the attachment he’d apparently accrued to his college, his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of light footsteps heading upstairs. It would be Bitty, of course. What was a normal way to approach this situation? Did Bitty hold a grudge about the concussion? Or was there some sort of Southern tradition about welcoming people who moved in across the hall that he was expected to observe? Maybe he should seem casual about it. Yes, good idea, he should sit on his bed and just happen to see Bitty walk past.

Except his own door was closed, and obviously that wouldn’t work. Quietly, he moved forward to swing his door open without attracting the attention of the person on the stairs. There was only just enough time to sit back down on the bed before a blond head was moving past.

 _Be casual_.

‘Oh, hi Bitty.’

_Nailed it._

‘Oh, hey. I thought you were about to come out.’

_What? Where did that come from? How did you-_

‘Why would I come out?’ he heard himself say, just a little too intently.

Bitty seemed startled, ‘It’s just, I saw you open your door, I thought you were coming out of your room? Never mind.’

_…marde._

‘Oh! Right. Um. I needed the air? Anyway, howisyourconcussion?’

He blurted out the change of subject before Bitty could get in another response, and tried not to fidget too much with his duvet cover.

‘It’s better, thanks. How have you been?’

Every event that occurred over the summer chose that moment to erase itself from Jack’s memory.

‘Fine.’

‘Good.’

‘Yep.’

Bitty took the opportunity to withdraw into his room. But for some godforsaken reason, he also left his door open. Jack wondered how long he had to keep his own door open before it wouldn’t seem weird to close it too soon, and in the meantime tried to think of conspicuously normal activities to undertake in his room, on the off chance that Bitty should glance over and see him.

Things were never like that with Johnson, but he was having difficulty thinking of a reason why. Either way, if things were going to continue the way that they started, then this was going to be a second inconvenience for him to deal with.

. _/

By the end of the week, Jack was struggling to remember the reason why he’d ever stopped hating Bitty. Living so close to him was some sort of tailor-made purgatory.

First, it was the hours Bitty kept. He was beginning to wonder if he’d eventually get used to the sound of the sophomore traipsing upstairs at a frankly unreasonable time of the night, or if he’d just have to accept that he would keep being awakened around the hour where it was hard to know whether it was a new day or not.

And then there was the music. Bitty and his playlist were responsible for the second, third, and fourth times Jack tried out his new noise cancelling headphones. He was starting to get used to the feeling of everything being muted, but he also couldn’t ignore the fact that it didn’t work completely.

But there was more! He would film videos in his room, so that Jack felt the need to stay as quiet as possible in case he would show up on the recording. And sometimes he’d get sucked into a conversation that lasted so long that he’d be late to get to sleep. And that wasn’t counting all those times when Bitty’s procrastination techniques resulted in Jack also not getting anything done. And, worst of all, he’d taken to appearing in Jack’s room with a new question about a herb or hockey or even what it was like in Canada.

Things were already getting dire for Jack, but then Bitty went and curled up on the ice again, and that was the worst thing of all. The new frogs looked at each other in confusion, and Jack glanced over at the coaches. The expression on their faces was everything he’d been hoping not to see.

The next time Jack saw him, it was obvious he’d been crying. Now, living so close, there was no avoiding each other even when they wanted to. He stopped at the doorway of his own room and opened his mouth to speak, despite having no idea what he was going to say.

It didn’t matter. Bitty cut him off with a frustrated, ‘I’m _sorry_.’

‘What?’

‘I get that this is a big deal for you, and I’m trying to do better. You don’t have to yell at me.’

‘I-’

‘I promise I’ll sort it out.’

‘Bits-’

The door shut like a punctuation mark; just enough force to make it clear that the conversation was over. A little dispirited already, Jack set his alarm to four in the morning once again.

. _/

            **Kent:**                Have you met Aurore yet?

The text came in just as Jack was about to go to bed. It was like Kent could tell that his year was starting off badly, and just wanted to make it worse.

            **Jack:**                No

            **Jack:**                Stop asking

            **Kent:**                Come on, it won’t be so bad. She speaks French

The problem with the rise of texting over phone calls is that there was no way to hang up.

Creaking from outside Shitty’s room. Jack still had no idea how he made it from his own window to the reading room, but he seemed to manage it with annoying frequency. And, there he was, starting his antics up again this year.

He waited for the tell-tale footfalls on the flat of the roof, a few seconds longer to make sure Shitty had stable enough footing, and then he slid his window open.

‘ _Inside_.’ he hissed into the darkness.

‘Oh. Um. Hi, Jack. Didn’t expect to run into-’

‘If you don’t get your ass back inside this Haus in three seconds I am going to push you off the roof.’

Haloed by a streetlamp, Jack could see Shitty freeze.

‘I didn’t know you ever spoke like that.’

‘ _I’m not fucking around_.’

Shitty practically dove through the window, avoiding knocking over a basil plant by a miracle. He hit the floor with a soft _oof_ but without enough sign of injury for Jack, as captain, to be concerned.

‘…What’s up?’

Jack glared down at him, hoping that his height was intimidating enough for this situation, ‘We’re not doing this again this year. I’ve had enough. Either tell me what in God’s name you’re doing when you sneak out at night, or I will _board up your door and windows and only let you leave through my room so I can keep track of you_.’

He could practically see Shitty’s mind frantically working behind his wide eyes, ‘I was, y’know… going for a run. Exercise.’

‘Going… for… a run.’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘You can’t possible know that.’

‘Yes. I can. Trust me, I know full well that you were not going for a run.’

Slowly, Shitty staggered to his feet, brushed his knees off, and looked Jack up and down, ‘Are those seriously your pyjamas?’

Looking down, he remembered that he’d been planning to sleep in an old oversized Habs shirt and boxers printed with the Fleurdelisé.

‘It’s hot.’

‘Well, it certainly shows off your legs.’

‘I meant the _weather_. Don’t change the subject.’

It was the heavy-looking backpack slung over Shitty’s shoulder that was really starting to concern Jack. What could he possibly be doing? Was it illegal? Could it damage Jack’s reputation by association if it became public? No, wait, that last one wasn’t supposed something he should be worrying about, was it? It was probably selfish or something.

‘Listen…’ Shitty said. But evidently he didn’t know what he’d been intending to say next, because the pause dragged on.

‘I am listening. _You’re not speaking_.’

‘I’m _thinking_. You like that don’t you? You’re always trying to make me study- ow! Stop hitting me! Okay I’ll stop changing the subject!’

‘Explain.’

‘Okay… okay. Listen… it’s a secret. I’d tell you if could – you know me, bro, I’m open about everything – but that’s a breach of trust and I’m not about that. But don’t worry, I won’t get caught.’

‘Shits-’

‘I MEANT to say it’s not illegal.’

It was enough to make him want to yell, to reach back into the worst version of his angry hockey captain self, but it was late at night and he was trying to be better than that, and, anyway, he didn’t particularly want to invite the rest of this Haus into this irritating mystery.

That didn’t stop his eye from twitching, though.

With as much force as he could put into a loud whisper, he addressed every distressing thing about Shitty’s dedication to his top secret shenanigans, ‘Shits, do you realise how stressed I am? It’s only the second week of the year and I’m really stressed. There isn’t a superlative in the English language that is enough to convey quite how stressed I am. Are you with me so far? Do you need to write this down? I’ve got hockey to deal with. And college. And the team. And my parents efforts to make me less stressed, which always stresses me out even more. I do _not_ need to deal with you sneaking out past my window all the goddamn time. And do you know who else is stressed?’

‘Is it the people who have to deal with you when you’re stressed?’

‘Shut up, Shits. This is a lecture, not an argument.’

‘Sorry, sir. Go on. Who else is stressed?’

‘Bitty. Bitty is stressed. Have you noticed? He’s stress baking more or less constantly. Even his pies taste like stress. I didn’t even realise that that was possible but I swear I can taste the stress baked into his pies. Do you think Bitty needs to hear you sneaking out on god-knows-what business in the middle of the night? Why don’t you use the door? I know you’re trying not to be noticed, but you’ve clearly failed and the fact that you’re climbing down from your window only makes this whole think look more suspicious. And it sure as hell had better not be illegal because I do not want police all over this Haus and discovering your stock of The Thing That Does Not Look As Much Like Oregano As You Think It Does- no, shut up, I don’t want to hear you say that you won’t get caught.’

Shitty seemed to be deflating slowly, but that didn’t stop him from saying, ‘I really have to go.’

‘What’s in the bag, Shits?’

‘WHAT? Nothing. What bag?’

‘Don’t try that. Didn’t you get how stressed I am? It’s very. I am very stressed.’

‘Yes, I know that, Jack. We _all_ know that. But I’m still going and I’m pretty sure there’s no way for you to actually stop me so-’

The rest of that sentence was cut off when Shitty turned to leave and Jack picked him off the floor. Without another word, he threw him and his heavy bag (which hit Jack in the face, but he wasn’t exactly going to admit that) over his shoulder and marched towards their shared bathroom.

‘We. Have. Practice. Tomorrow. Morning.’ he told the weight he was carrying, as sternly as possible. With each new word he brought his foot down on the door handle again, hoping to open it. Failing that, he shifted his grip to free up a hand.

It was then that Shitty twisted out of his grasp. How he did it, Jack wasn’t quite sure. His reaction times were just fast enough to catch him by the handle of his backpack. It would have made sense for Shitty to shed the bag and flee, but instead he froze, clutching tightly at the straps as if to stop the bag slipping away.

 _What the hell is in this thing_.

‘Let go, Jack.’ Shitty said, and his voice was disconcertingly serious now.

‘Tell me where you’re going.’

‘I can’t.’

Jack’s knuckles were turning white against the handle. He was gripping to tight, probably, but that was just the situation.

‘The hell you can’t. I left it alone all last year-’

‘Well, I’m not exactly the only one of us with secrets, am I?’

There was real anger in his voice. Worse, he had a point. Jack wanted to protest that his secrets were _different_ , and maybe they were, but there was no way for him to explain exactly why they were different without letting slip some of the things that no one would ever believe.

‘I…’

He didn’t finish. Really, he wasn’t even sure what he was going to say. Something like, _I don’t even want my secrets_. But Shitty had taken him by surprise, and his grip had slipped enough to be shrugged off. A sudden movement, and the plants on the windowsill once again survived by mere millimetres as Shitty vanished into the night.

_God dammit._

Jack could see the shadow flitting across the lawn. On instinct, he set to following him (through the front door like a normal person), flinging the door open and-

The plan didn’t get any further.

‘Evening.’

 _Oh, Christ_.

‘Bittle. What are you doing up? We have practice tomorrow morning.’

‘I know. I was about to go to bed.’ Bitty replied, in a voice that suggested very strongly that he was not, in fact, about to go to bed, ‘I just wanted to check on you. I heard you and Shitty trying to argue quietly and I… wanted to know… if you were…’

It took Bitty’s shifting gaze for Jack to remember what he was wearing by way of pyjamas.

‘I’m fine.’ he said, while half-subconsciously shifting his posture to show his body to a better advantage.

‘And Shitty-’

He moved to look past Jack, who stepped to the side enough to block Bitty’s view.

‘Also fine.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

‘Good night.’

‘Good night.’

 _Idiot_ , Jack scolded himself, as he retreated into the relative sanctuary of his room, shutting both the door and the window. He wasn’t sure what he’d done that was so stupid, but he’d felt like an idiot anyway and, besides, he knew he could always count on his anxiety to fill in the blanks.

 _Don’t dwell too long on how you acted stupid in front of Bitty_ , his anxiety warned him, _or you might forget that Shitty probably hates you now_.

It was past time for sleep. Somehow, he felt exhausted without having done anything particularly exhausting that day. It was the sort of exhaustion that was more an incessant, low level irritation. Sleep would either cure it, or postpone him having to deal with it for a good eight hours.

 _You’ve definitely ruined your friendship_.

There was no point in trying to convince himself that that wasn’t true, no matter how little relation the assertion had to any actual facts. Instead, he collapsed onto his bed with the justification, _it will still be ruined in the morning_ , and miraculously managed to fall asleep.

. _/

He woke up almost immediately. Nevertheless, it was somehow already morning. Time was stupid.

There were birds singing outside his window, because birds were also stupid.

And, as his groggy senses came back to life and started registering all manner of equally stupid things, there were voices coming from downstairs. Loud voices. Loud, angry voices. Loud, angry voices that he didn’t quite recognise.

He weighed up the imperative to protect the Haus from malfeasance against the imperative not to run into Bitty again while still in his pyjamas, and decided that dangerous confrontations could wait until he was dressed. As an afterthought, he palmed the black knife that Kent had given him on his way out of the room.

 _If you’re criminals and I have to fight you, Officer Erangi is definitely not going to believe me_.

With no small measure or reluctance, he stuck his head around the kitchen door.

‘YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE, DERICK NURSE!’

Oh. Okay then. Jack slipped the knife into his pocket a little sheepishly and ducked back out of the line of sight of the two warring freshmen.

‘Chill.’

Even from around the corner, Jack could tell that that one word was intended to have the opposite effect.

‘DO! NOT! TELL! ME! TO! CHILL!’

This was the moment that Jack remembered that there was one piece of apple pie left in the fridge.

‘Trust me, Poindexter, you’d feel better if you learnt to chill.’

It was a really good pie. Did he dare brave the kitchen to retrieve it?

‘ _I’D FEEL BETTER AFTER BURYING YOUR CORPSE IN THE WOODS TO HIDE THE EVIDENCE!_ ’

Or, maybe, breakfast could wait.

‘Woah-’

‘DON’T YOU DARE SAY IT.’

‘C h i l l.’

In a sudden burst of hunger-induced bravery, Jack stepped into the kitchen with a passable impersonation of a deaf man. At least the two frogs played their part, both falling silent and slipping in pseudo-casual poses, as if there was any way that Jack may not be aware of the train wreck he’d walked into. The unnatural hush held as the pie was draw from the fridge, and the three of them watched as it rotated slowly in the yellow glow of the microwave.

He didn’t tarry once the pie was finished heating up. The frogs were barely out of his line of sight before the argument exploded once more.

‘I. DO. NOT. _CHILL_.’

‘What’s that?’

Bitty was on the stairs as Jack was returning to his room, squinting down in the direction of the battle.

‘The new defencemen are getting to know each other.’

‘Oh. Alright. I’ll go… erm… say hi.’

‘Good idea. And, Bits?’

Bitty was just slipping past him in the direction of the kitchen, but he turned around near the bottom step, ‘Yeah?’

‘If you could just gently remind them that they don’t actually live here? God knows I’m used to frogs spending all their time here anyway’ – a pause, and he knew that they were both thinking about how effectively Bitty had annexed the kitchen for himself the year before – ‘but I’m pretty sure you have to pay rent before you’re allowed to wake up the Haus.’

The corner of Bitty’s mouth twitched up, like he wasn’t quite sure if there was a joke in there for him to find funny, and then he headed off in the direction of what now sounded like a cacophony of crashing pots.


	2. “We must first note some unlawful remedies which are practiced by certain people”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I'm pretty sure that the history class was in the second semester instead of the first but w/e

Even Lardo was stressed. At least, that’s what it seemed like as she threw paint viciously at a hapless canvass and muttered what may well have been medieval curses at her paintbrushes. This was like fighting his way through the seven circles of Hell, only to find that there was a bonus eighth circle that wasn’t on the map.

Lardo was never stressed.

Jack was standing awkwardly in what he was accustomed to being his quiet corner of this quiet art room, feeling like he was standing on the edge of some mortal battle.

‘Are… you alright?’ he asked, tentatively.

‘Fine.’ Lardo replied, jabbing so hard with her paintbrush that it tore a hole through her canvass, ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You seem…’

She whirled around with, if not murder in her eyes, then at the very least grievous bodily harm.

‘…preoccupied.’ he finished, lamely.

‘I’m not on your team, you don’t have to care.’

‘You’re basically on the team?’

The upwards inflection hadn’t been intended, and he hoped that she would ignore the doubt in his voice.

‘Uh huh.’ she replied, raising one perfectly-shaped eyebrow in an artfully unimpressed way.

‘Well, you hold the team together. Which, to be frank, is a lot harder and much more important.’

There was a distinct possibility that she was pleased, just under her icy exterior. Either way, she spun back around and returned her violent attention to the canvass. Jack used the spare time to shoot off a desperate text.

 **Jack:**                How do I destress a stressed person who won’t admit to being stressed?

He had no idea that she had scissors at her art station, but she was suddenly holding a heavy steel pair in a death grip.

            **Kent:**                Which one? The blond one?

            **Jack:**                No.

            **Jack:**                Well, yes, him too

            **Jack:**                But I’m talking about Lardo

With her back still turned to him, Lardo growled, ‘I can hear you having an idea, and I want you to know that I am not on board.’

            **Kent:**                Your manager? What does she like?

            **Jack:**                Art. Ducklings. Beer pong. Gossiping with Bitty.

            **Kent:**                Do you have any ducklings on hand?

            **Jack:**                Why? Would I have ducklings?

            **Kent:**                Then take her to an art gallery, idk.

‘Take a break.’ Jack suggested.

In the next moment, there was a paintbrush held like a knife inches from his nose.

‘I’m busy.’

Well, at least she wasn’t threatening him with the scissors.

‘Are… you having trouble finding inspiration?’

He held his breath and hoped he was right, and that Lardo wasn’t about to take offence to a breach in some artist code that he didn’t understand, or something.

Thankfully, she deflated a little and lowered the brush, ‘Kind of. Art is hard.’

_Okay, Parse, let’s hope your advice is good._

‘Let’s go to an art gallery?’

‘Alright, do you know any art galleries in Boston?’

No.

_Wait…_

‘Yes, as a matter of fact. Come on, pack your stuff up, I’ll get my car.’

The paintbrush was back under his nose, but this time there was no venom in it, ‘I’m only doing this because I want to know what sort of art gallery you know about, Zimmermann.’

‘Noted.’

And with that, Jack tucked his unread book back under his arm, and set the pace for the walk back to the Haus for how long it normally took Lardo to clean her brushes.

When he got there, Bitty was in the kitchen again.

‘Don’t you have a lecture?’

A shrug, ‘I dunno, maybe.’

Oh, Christ. Why did being captain have to involve so much responsibility? Contrary to what Kent seemed to think of him, Jack had never really been that good with responsibility. Particularly when the responsibility was to someone else. Hockey, he could handle. History, also in his repertoire. Taking lots of photos and then refusing to show them to people? He was something of an expert at that. But dealing with the emotional complexities of a group of college students?

‘You wanna go look at some art?’ Jack asked.

‘Will it help me stay on the hockey team?’

Well, that was an unexpected metaphorical knife to his gut. For all Bitty’s complaining during their practices, he hadn’t thought about how much he actually liked the sport.

‘No.’ Jack admitted, ‘Art mostly just… sits there.’

‘Okay.’

‘It’ll be fun?’

‘Alright.’

‘Great. Okay then. Let’s go pick up Lardo.’

He even sounded nervous to himself. There was no point it trying to convince himself that there was _no reason_ to be nervous – this was just hanging out with friends, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if he was the _only_ person responsible for their emotional wellbeing – that sort of logic had never helped before.

Bitty was weirdly quiet on the way to Lardo’s art building. Jack, too, refrained from speaking. His hands were gripping the steering wheel and he was staring straight ahead, driving as if the person sitting next to him was testing him to give him his license.

 _Why did this year have to start off so tense?_ It had gotten to the point that he was actually looking forward to Hallowe’en, just so the rest of the team would lighten up a bit.

Except for Shitty. He needed to go in the opposite direction. Everyone else needed to relax; Shitty needed to get back to work and focus on hockey and his study.

‘Hey Bits.’

Lardo nodded at the passenger seat before yanking open the car door and, in lieu of a seatbelt, chose to lie across the back seats in something like exhaustion. It was probably a dangerous way to be driven, but Jack didn’t want to find out how she’d react if he told her to sit up.

 _Crash into something just to see what would happen_.

He gripped the steering wheel a little bit tighter and internally responded to that latest intrusive thought, _I think you’ve exhausted the “crash your car into something” genre. Try to be a little more original_.

The pulled up to the museum safely, and entirely without Jack intentionally veering the car into oncoming traffic. Over his shoulder, he mentioned to Lardo, ‘Your name is Isabella now, by the way.’

‘What?’

‘Isabella. It’s a popular girl’s name-’

‘Alright, never mind.’

They had pulled up to a sturdy, square building, thick and exact like a great sugar cube that had been exposed to the accumulated soot of the city. Of the three of them, only Bitty would fail to recognise it. If Shitty were there he’d no doubt see simply another familiar feature of his hometown.

Inside, the architecture was much more impressive. All columns and arches and – in the centre of the building – a great courtyard under a vaulted skylight, they’d stepped into some sort of Victoriana greatest hits. Lardo had already fallen behind as Jack reached the counter to pay, so he used the opportunity to call out, ‘Come on, Izzy.’

‘Izzy?’ the man behind the counter (Alfie, according to his nametag) queried.

Jack waved his hand in Lardo’s direction by way of explanation, and waited for the next question.

‘Is that short for Isabella?’

‘It is.’ Lardo confirmed, thankfully deciding to play along. The confusion in her voice was genuine, and the man behind the counter didn’t think to question anything.

‘Well then,’ he said, with the sort of cheerfulness that can only be bought by being paid much more than the minimum wage his counterparts would receive in lower brow places, ‘Your admission is free. It’s a tradition started by our founder, Isabella Steward Gardner.’

‘Is it really?’ Lardo asked. Jack, still facing away from her, nonetheless felt her amused gaze on the back of his head.

‘Sure is. Now, if you two gentlemen…’

Jack paid for Bitty, and they both followed Lardo’s trail throughout the museum. All Jack was thinking as they moved from artwork to artwork was that he should have come here much earlier. He’d known about this place long before he’d ever come to Boston, but somehow it had taken him more than three years to show up. It irked a little, like a lesson he’d failed to learn.

The area that Jack estimated to be the centre was carved out of the building, with a roof of pitched skylights becoming its only claim to still being indoors. It was a garden, pressed in on all sides by Isabella’s elegant architecture. Standing there felt like standing in a true wild. The green was greener, somehow, the air more fragrant, like its precious shell was enough to keep out all the urban symptoms of Boston.

Jack personally thought that this was the building’s real art, but Lardo was looking impatient to go. Whatever charms that water may hold when it was there, glittering, and simply existing with no practical purpose, Lardo favoured the works on the walls.

They moved back inside like a retreat to a cave.

Was Isabella Gardner satisfied with her life? In the end, when it was all supposed to flash before your eyes but only seems to throw up some half-hearted nostalgia if you try to focus your mind. Did she try to remember it all at the last? It seemed somehow selfish to be disappointed that the promised slideshow didn’t appear, to consciously use those final moments to evaluate, but maybe he was judging too quickly. Certainly, Isabella had left her own mark. Was she satisfied? Did it feel like the right ending to her story, or an abrupt cut off with threads still loose? And if she could somehow look back on her work with the indistinct idea that it was good enough, was there a trick to it? Could she teach it to Jack?

The snake stone was smooth and cool in his pocket. A large frame diverted the attention of Lardo and Bitty, and Jack slipped it out for one surreptitious glance through the hole in the centre. It was a foolish thought, fleeting but strong, and sure enough the room remained stubbornly mundane.

‘Hey, Jack!’

With a guilty sleight of hand, the stone fell heavy into his pocket once more.

‘Yeah?’

It was Bitty, calling him over cheerfully to where Lardo was frowning at a large, framed expanse of wallpaper.

That is, more accurately, the framed space where a canvass should be.

‘Well it’s not to my taste.’ he replied, teasing a snicker from the art student among them.

‘Is this why you suggested this place?’ Bitty continued, ‘I _knew_ there was some weird bit of history trivia here, ‘s the only thing besides hockey that seems to interest you.’

And he gestured to the little plaque beneath the empty frame.

._/

Here’s how Jack always imagined the story:

_It was a loud night in Boston, a city far enough from Ireland to celebrate Irishness without all that pesky Catholicism getting in the way. Never mind that Saint Patrick was Welsh, or that feast days were sacred and solemn affairs, or that the American Irish were raised up only as an excuse to shun other types of immigrants or to drink to excess. None of that mattered when there were green shirts with “kiss me I’m Irish” printed on them and pints of cold beer and millennia of folklore to fail to understand. Jack himself was almost – but not yet – born. His love for folklore would take even longer to develop and so, for the time being, Boston could enjoy Saint Patrick’s Day without his ineffective annoyance._

_It was 1990, and Boston liked to imagine that it was partying._

_This wasn’t_ quite _true. Denizens of any metropole rarely took up one activity in large enough numbers to be able to say that the city itself was doing anything. The sort of people who enjoyed Irish pubs and drunken sloppiness had flocked to Irish pubs to engage in some drunken sloppiness, with considerably greater enthusiasm and colour-coordination than usual. Those who didn’t, had other things to do._

_For the same reasons, it wouldn’t be right to say that Boston was drunk. Nonetheless, a not insignificant proportion of its population was drunk._

_Of those number that had other things to do were those members of the police force whose job it was to keep the nightlife to just the right level of disorder to count as a party, but not to cause too much in the way of property damage. Most of them walked through the evening where the coloured lights spilling from the pubs met the darkness of the street, and a few of them wished that they were off duty and able to join the revelry._

_Two more people with other things to do were the security guards of the Isabella Gardner museum. Night had long since fallen, and the drunks were staggering in a vaguely homeward direction, when there was a knock at the door._

_Were the guards concerned about who was on the other side? It was unlikely to be thieves, they must have figured. Thieves didn’t – at least in the limited understanding of thieves that they’d imagined up – knock on the front door._

_‘Police.’ someone must have said. And that settled it. Police were much more likely to knock on front doors than were thieves._

_The door was open to the reassuring sight of navy blue uniforms. And then it was simple etiquette; invite the constables in, ask them what business they were there on, raise your hands when they point their guns at you. And, of course, when they tie you up in the basement, distract yourself from the danger you are in by mentally composing the curriculum vitae you will no doubt soon be passing around._

_All it took were uniforms and confidence, and the thieves had the young morning to themselves. They used it to drift coolly past masterpieces and cut a select few paintings from frames. The selections would later lead police (the real ones) to suspect that they were stealing to order, but even ignoring the most valuable works, it was the most expensive art heist in history._

_The museum offered up five million dollars to anyone who could find the stolen pieces, but the reward had never been claimed._

._/

With all three of them feeling a little more relaxed after their trip, Jack had to grudgingly admit that he may owe Kent one for the advice.

Not much of one, but one was owed nonetheless.

So it was that he headed over to the industrial outskirts of town in search of the girl Kent called Aurore. A dismal sort of drizzle was just settling in for the long-run, flecking his coat and scarf with a sort of glitter.

It was at the side door of what seemed to be a movie-set-grimy factory, ambiguously abandoned, that he caught his own name a little below his left ear.

‘Aurore?’ he asked in response (a little flourish in the French; he always instinctively wanted to be liked and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to enjoy her fleeting surprise as he pronounced the name correctly).

The girl nodded her thin head, and then jerked it in a “follow me” gesture as she led the way in through the door. Inside was a cathedral of a space, all gunmetal greys and dust diluting the sunlight falling in from the high windows before it could reach them. The weather completed the picture of dimness, almost softness, and Jack followed Aurore’s wet footsteps with a rush of nerves.

She was all in green; forest green yoga pants with lime sneakers, shoulder muscles almost covered in something between a crop top and a sports bra in a shade that he couldn’t help but identify as “Dallas Stars green”, fingerless gloves in the greyish green of camouflage. She had guided him over to a small group of waiting people before turning to face him. Jack’s first impression was of the black hair, cropped close to her head in minute curls, and such a perfect match for her skin that the effect was to make it seem as if the edges of her face were slightly fuzzy.

This was all the detail he could manage in a few seconds, even helped by the instinct of his anxious mind trying to notice everything in case it was important later. His second impression would have to wait; with Aurore being the object of his nerves, he’d entirely failed to notice the other people he was joining.

‘Jack?’ one of them said, incredulously.

Turning to the source of the voice, all he could think was _of course_. Because of course this was going to happen. Of course this irksome little mystery was going to deepen when he least had patience for it. Of _course_.

‘Shitty?’

‘What are you doing here?’

Jack had no believable answer to that question.

‘What are _you_ doing here?’

For a fraction of a second Shitty’s green eyes flicked nervously, and – while Jack was not exactly an expert at reading faces – he knew that what was coming was going to be a lie, ‘It’s good training. For hockey.’

‘Same.’ Jack responded, hoping that his relief at having an excuse handed to him wasn’t noticeable, ‘Hockey.’

Aurore placed her hands on her hips then, which was apparently some sort of cue because the rest of those assembled fell quiet.

‘Welcome back. It’s a new year so let me start out my saying that I’ll be expecting prompt payment…’

Her accent was thick French-Caribbean, and with every word her teeth flashed brilliant against her dark skin, in a way that was just distracting enough that Jack was surprised when he heard his own name.

‘…is a new guy, but he was referred to me so no one here is to be a dick to him, got it?’

Mumbled assent. It was easy to promote her in his mind to the position of coach, although this was unlike any training he’d ever experienced, and their little band were hardly a team.

She was talking directly to him now, in a style of French that he’d never heard before, ‘And don’t worry, your friend made sure you’re all paid up. Just try not to be terrible at this at I won’t be too harsh. Any questions?’

‘Yeah, how does…’ just in time, he remembered that changing tongues would not prevent the English speakers from catching the name, ‘…my friend… know you?’

By the slight twisting of her lip he guessed that Aurore was as new to his dialect as he was to hers.

‘I meant, any questions relevant to the task at hand?’

She gave him a few seconds to respond, but by the time he’d managed to get his thoughts in order, she was clapping her hands together and saying ‘Let’s go.’

._/

Over the summer, Jack and Kent had had a conversation. Which is to say, in this instance at least, Kent had had an Idea and Jack had struggled in vain to quell it. The exact dialogue that then took place had long since been lost to the inexact art of memory, but in Jack’s mind it went something like;

Kent: Hello, Jack. I continue to be far too interested in all problems of a magical nature that irk you, despite being entirely mundane myself, because I wilfully fail to understand the consequences that this has on your life and the genuine risks that you are forced to take.

Jack: Hello, Kent. May I suggest that you make a resolution not to let movies colour your perception of real life to too great an extent, and consider that not all adventures are entertaining?

Kent: I decline your proposal to do so, and will continue to take a romanticised view of your magical plight. I have a suggestion to put to you that I will claim is as a result of me, your friend, caring about your welfare, but will in no small part also be as a result of my unhealthy obsession with viewing your life as some sort of superhero story.

Jack: I am not interested.

Kent: I am not going to accept your disinterest and, as you now claim my friendship, you are socially obliged to listen to me natter inconsequentially away until you give up out of frustration and accept my suggestion.

Jack: What is your suggestion?

Kent: Parkour.

At this point Jack expressed his lack of interest, expressed mild surprise at Kent’s acquaintance with someone who apparently coached parkour in an extremely unofficial and informal fashion (‘She’s not with any organisation and, sure, you do meet in abandoned warehouses, but that’s not really the point…’), and expressed his lack of interest again in much stronger terms.

Eventually, of course, Kent won the point.

._/

Much to Jack’s annoyance, Shitty decided to share the walk home with him, saying things like, ‘You didn’t do too badly for a beginner,’ and, ‘you’ll probably outdo us all with a bit of practice,’ and entirely failing to hide his glee at being so demonstrably better than Jack at some form of sport.

 _Sport_ , thought Jack, _ha_.

His arms ached. His legs, used as they were to the exertions of hockey, nonetheless also ached. His pride was also more than a little wounded, and his hands – Jack had them protected from the frigid autumn by holding them in his pockets, but that didn’t stop the sting of skin rubbed raw from gripping, struggling for purchase, occasionally slipping.

 _I hate you_ , he thought, in what he hoped was the direction of Kent.

‘So…’ Jack began, as the rounded the corner and the Haus came into sight.

‘…secret?’ Shitty finished.

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’

They fell silent, but for the rhythmic slap of soles against wet pavement.

Jack shot Shitty a look, ‘So is that where you disappear to when you sneak out at night?’

‘Yep.’ said Shitty, just a second too late.

They didn’t tarry on the cold doorstep, instead shutting the door behind them with haste and breathing in deeply; something was being baked in the kitchen, and Jack took a moment to silently thank Johnson for his choice on dibs. The sweet, earthy fragrance of his herbs upstairs lost some of their romance now that the lower floor was filled with the smell of fresh pies, but Jack didn’t mind so much. Mostly he was wondering if he would sneak some air fresheners into the attic and hopefully finish exorcising the frat boy stench that had long since seeped into the very woodwork of the Haus.

‘Oh! Jack, you’re here!’

Bitty’s face had appeared sideways out of the kitchen, and Jack had to resist the urge to tilt his head to match the angle.

‘I am.’ he agreed, as Shitty melted upstairs in what he must have imagined was some sort of tact, but with a motivation that Jack couldn’t begin to decode.

‘What’s St John’s Wort?’ Bitty asked cheerfully.

 _Calm down_ , Jack told the warning bells in his head, that were just beginning to stir awake, _let’s just see what’s going on first_.

‘Why…?’

‘Well… I was looking through the recipes that grandma said I shouldn’t attempt by myself-’

The warning bells were now leaning forward with interest in the proceedings.

‘-and I was wondering if I shouldn’t maybe try this one someday?’

_See? He hasn’t done anything stupid. Yet._

Jack followed him into the kitchen and glanced over his shoulder at the recipe (some variation on that rich, chocolate _sacher torte_ that had sprung into being in Germany like some hedonistic ritual), which had been adapted by copious scrawled notes in ways that made Jack remember the first time he’d read _Chocolat_.

It needed St John’s Wort like Holster needed platform heels; Jack had never seen anything so unapologetically excessive kept in such a domestic object as a cook book.

‘It’s. Um. A pain killer, and sort of an antidepressant. You can buy it in supermarkets because the FDA is stupid and people seem to equate “natural” with “no side effects”. It has some pretty wild interactions with medicines so I wouldn’t recommend being too cavalier in your use.’

Bitty nodded solemnly, and Jack once again gazed past him to the recipe on the page. There was his favourite, lemon balm, bringing its citrus flavour to a place no self-respecting chef would think it belonged. Doubtless it wasn’t enough for the taste to be noticed over the dense, dark chocolate cake, but Grandma Bittle clearly wasn’t even trying to appear something other than a witch.

‘Gosh.’ said Bitty, though Jack was starting to suspect that he mostly used that as a filler word, or to remind people that he was southern and therefore born into some genetic sort of vaguely defined “charm”, ‘You’ve got to use some of that knowledge for history. You’d get an A, I’m sure.’

‘…’ said Jack.

‘I know you’ve been worried about it, since you’re more used to hockey than baking.’

‘…’ Jack repeated, with more emphasis this time.

‘And your notes are mostly hockey plays, so that probably wouldn’t be too helpful (andIdon’ttakenotesinclasssoyoucan’tborrowthem). Why not do something you know?’

‘…!’

‘What is it?’ he asked, seemingly noticing Jack’s ever louder silence for the first time.

‘I’ve just remembered, I’ve got to…’ he waved his arm in the general direction of his room as if this explained everything, and then, with an awkward little nod, fled the scene as fast as he could casually manage.

 _You’re an idiot_ , he berated himself, the moment he reached the sanctuary of his room and leant against his closed door, _you’re-_

The year before, Jack had been given his first C grade in history. What the actual question was, he could no longer remember, but he did remember surgically removing any reference to Keynes and the deeply political debate he represented. He’d gotten a note back saying that he needed to engage in more controversial subjects, that he seemed to be avoiding actually saying anything.

Yet, somehow “I’m a witch” didn’t seem like the statement that the history faculty had in mind from its students.

_See, now you’re definitely being stupid. You could make Anzac biscuits, it doesn’t mean that you’re a New Zealand housewife in 1916 worrying about her husband’s war._

Still, food that would have been made by a witch was a very wide field. He couldn’t just use Bitty’s book; that wouldn’t so much be “food that a witch would make” as “food that Eric Bittle’s grandmother would make” to a professor. And there was the extra concern that labelling the recipe “food that a witch would have made” was advertising to Bitty, if not to anyone else, that Jack’s knowledge as it related to food was fixed firmly in witchcraft.

Besides, he’d already decided to make WWII-era food. It was hard to mess up that kind of meal; all heavy with coarse flour and with nothing particularly intricate pulled from the ration-books. And yet…

 _You’re worrying over nothing_ , he assured himself sternly. It was probably just anxiety making a big deal out of a small matter. No one could possibly infer any of his jealously guarded secrets from a few herbs in a history project. Not even Bitty, who somehow remained completely unsuspicious of his grandmother’s recipes.

Right then, it was settled. Not everything had to be overtly magical. It would just be some perfectly innocuous baking with Bitty. It might even be-

_His friends seemed to visit him in the blue house more than they did in any of his other potential homes, and Bitty more than the rest. The kitchen was Bitty’s kitchen, if not in reality, then at least in Jack’s mind. The glass-fronted cabinets, the expensive oven, the notes on the fridge with words Jack couldn’t quite call to mind…_

_Bitty had helped paint the house, along with other members of Samwell Men’s Hockey, and some more people Jack didn’t know but nonetheless felt a great affection for. Not that Bitty’s reach made him all that useful with a paintbrush. He’d told him as much, and for his efforts received flecks of blue paint flicked into his face, that remained like unlikely freckles for a little longer than either of them expected._

_It was a good memory. It hadn’t happened yet, but it was a good memory regardless. In the back of his mind, it reminded Jack of an earlier event between the two of them, that also hadn’t happened._

-fun.

Some thought must have triggered that new memory (if it could be described as a memory. Surely not, but Jack didn’t have any other word for it), although he wouldn’t have been surprised if his thought that not everything had to be magical had wrought an immediate backlash from some trickster god.

Either way, Jack was too tired to care. It was not yet dark, but he dropped onto his bed and hoped the aching would soon recede from his muscles. If magic was an irritation in his life, Kent was a migraine. There would be Words between them as soon as he could lift his arms to check his phone. Or, better yet…

Jack extracted his phone from his pocket and, ensuring it was on speaker, placed it on the bedside cabinet next to him.


	3. "But he would not cease from his incantation"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit Parse-heavy, even by my standards, and also I reeeeally messed up the timeline by accidently confusing a couple of separate things so, oops, i guess. I could have fixed it but didn't want to
> 
> I also shamelessly invented an entire backstory for a character because what else is fanfic for?

It was strange what friends could fail to learn about each other over the years. For Jack and Kent, the truth was that they’d never known each other when they _were_ someone, only when there was someone that they were _trying to be_. And Kent, the more successful, never really had any cause to pull back the screen. There were details of Kent’s life that Jack had already known intimately, and other aspects that had been left to scatter to the wind. The sum of these details deserves an outline:

The eldest of two, Kent was born to a loving, tireless mother; and a father, technically. The latter vanished from the picture shortly after a sister, Sadie, arrived. To Kent’s certain knowledge, none of the four involved had any strong regrets about the absence. But that was only the beginning of the story, in his confined youth, the part that was entirely irrelevant to a person who’d always been so enamoured by his own autonomy. So too did childhood pass in a constant tickertape of school and inconsequential things. He had no responsibilities to fulfil, no decisions to make, and then – somewhat abruptly – he found himself a teenager at the threshold of society.

His mother owned property in New York City. Not much, but it was nonetheless a feat that was achieved before his birth and in circumstances he still hadn’t quite worked out. On it, in passable if not ideal shape, was a solid wooden backpackers. As he matured in this home, he soon discovered that he could no longer seek entertainment from the guests – whose indulgence infallibly only extended to young children – but had instead to serve them in the limited capacity of teenaged chores. Still, it wasn’t difficult to engage in conversation with the guests, under the guise of friendly customer service, in exchange for tales of travel.

To his disappointment, the first real lesson he learnt about the unromantic outside world was that most backpackers who visited New York City were more boring than he’d expected. Certainly, they were more boring than they themselves evidently believed. There were stories of adventure, sure, but mostly there were stories of midwestern suburbia and how easy it was to get lost on the New Jersey turnpike.

He would later assert that it was out of restlessness than he became that most American of protégés, the “enterprising young man”. This is a term that usually meant either a) a criminal, or b) a person whose parents, when they told them that they could be anything they wanted, could back up the claim with enough funds that the young man unquestioningly believed them.

In his case the teachers who wrote in on his report cards were referring to his knack for frustrating them by finding much easier ways to do things than had been intended. But if they knew of some other activities, they wouldn’t have changed their minds.

Chief among them was the illicit alcohol trade he’d carefully cultivated. For some cash and an invite, Kent could supply a high school party with an exciting variety of alcohol that most of the invitees would only pretend to have heard of. No fake ID was involved, he could simply sneak what he needed from the storeroom behind his mother’s bar and charge a premium for reliability and for the fact that he was not running a serious risk of getting the police involved. With the mark-up he could charge, most was returned to the business’ accounts out of honesty and the convenient side effect that it covered his tracks, and the balance augmented his meagre allowance.

Aside from school, the tales of not-quite-worldly travellers, and his questionable business acumen – and even the odd summer job – the rest of his education came from the backpackers itself. Their home and business were one in the same, and for Kent and Sadie, household chores were of an endless variety.

As he’d explain to Jack much later, for once there was no mystery here. Kent had no secret past, all he had was an eclectic mix of skills. An astounding number of people locked room keys inside the rooms, and he soon found the most efficient way to open them up. Others would insist on complaining about the New York orchestra of car alarms that would wake them up, as if the Parsons were somehow responsible; Kent learnt how to retrace the steps of whatever thief had set it off to get inside the car and shut the damn thing off, safe in the knowledge that no one would begrudge him a minor crime if it meant a better night’s sleep. He’d memorised trespass laws through a hundred arguments with rowdy customers, and discovered a knack for breaking into buildings as much through his efforts to secure guests’ property from the New York nightlife as through his rebellious teenaged excursions when he ought to be asleep.

He could also, he took pains to point out, plaster up a hole someone had kicked in a wall, mix any number of cocktails, and put a duvet back in its case in under a minute. It was Jack’s fault, not his, that the only skills that he’d witnessed were the more suspicious ones. Maybe if Jack had psychic visions of embezzlement instead of death, he’d have discovered Kent’s accountancy abilities.

‘I came to Quebec for hockey because I’d met a lot of teenaged runaways,’ he finished, answering one of the last questions that Jack had left, ‘though god knows why they always seemed to come to New York. And I’d met a lot of people leaving their hometowns for some sort of grand tour before settling back down where they were born, but who didn’t even seem to have considered leaving the country. I was more prudent than the first lot and more interesting than the second.’

Jack didn’t respond. He’d suddenly remembered that he’d once promised to visit Kent’s backpackers, and had thus far completely failed to follow through.

‘So there you go. You now know as much about me as I know about you from all those goddamned news stories. Anything else?’

‘Yeah, how’d you know Aurore?’

A pause, ‘What, I can’t have a hobby?’

‘ _You_ used to do parkour?’

‘Shut up. Don’t laugh at me.’

‘I’m not laughing.’ Jack lied.

‘Fuck you, Zimms.’ Kent said, and then the line went dead.

._/

 _Okay_ , he thought, as he attached a clamp to the wheel of a would-be drunk driver’s car (not being an actual tow company, he simply put the number of Autism Speaks’ head office and let both parties take out their inevitable, bewildered frustration on each other). _This isn’t so bad. I’m handling this all very well and I can deal with whatever problem next arises_.

The ominous, buzzing cloud of the year that would follow refused to capitulate to his attempt at positivity. Nothing in particular may be going wrong at that exact moment, but there was always time.

 _Keep your head down_.

The old refrain returned as he headed back to the Haus. He’d made it thus far with comfortably little additional damage to his reputation (except, perhaps, in the eyes of one ex-pat kiwi with a police badge) and graduation was now materialising into a corporeal presence on his horizon. He just had to make it a little further. This time next year he’d be-

The cloud descended thick over his mind. As always, it had nothing useful to add, and only served to remind him of the uncertainty of his ever-more-immediate-future. A waste of time, if you asked Jack. Anxiety never seemed to remind him of _useful_ things – of course not – things like hockey practice and assignment due dates were left to his phone. His anxiety only bothered to give him little pop-up notifications like “you know this is your last year to prove you’re any good at hockey” or “remember your freshman year? That’s probably how your new team is gonna treat you” or “Kent Parson”. Things that were liable to raise his blood pressure.

Stepping onto the porch, he thought to himself, _god, you look even grumpier than usual_ , in an uncharacteristically girly voice… or… erm… maybe he didn’t. That didn’t seem like something that his head would come up with of its own volition.

And now his mind seemed to be giggling, but it probably wasn’t doing that either.

 _Don’t look so worried_ , said the voice-that-almost-certainly-wasn’t-coming-from-his-own-head, _I just wanted to tell you not to freak out when you open the door. The cute one and his friend are planning something._

He brought the snakestone up to his eye without thinking about it, scanning the darkening garden for anything that was unusual by frat-guy standards. A tall order, and one that was conspicuously not met.

 _You’re an idiot_ , the voice laughed.

This, he decided, wasn’t a problem. It was weird, sure, but that didn’t automatically make it a problem. The disembodied voice appearing in his head didn’t seem to want to do him any harm, so he resolved to disregard it on the premise that much, _much_ weirder things routinely inflicted themselves on his life.

The inside of the Haus smelled like alcohol and electrocution.

This was another thing that he decided not to deal with, if he could avoid it. A few more steps into the hall and, yep, the slightly noxious scent of copper and singeing was mingling with an excitingly fruity variation on alcohol. And something else underlying it all… earthy and rich, but not quite so strong on the air.

Risking a glance into the living room, he discovered an unlikely assortment of objects that included, amongst other things, a not inconsiderable quantity of fresh pumpkins, some dubious-looking scientific equipment, assorted half-constructed lighting arrangements, and one intently focused gender studies major haphazardly mixing coloured liquids of questionable provenance into a large tub. It was a testament to Jack’s wild inability to control his own life that this scene was more concerning to him than the arrival of a giggling symptom of psychosis.

‘Tub juice.’ Shitty informed him, gesturing to his concoction with a dripping ladle that, perhaps miraculously, wasn’t corroding from the liquid.

‘I see that.’

‘I actually wanted to ask you if I could use some of your cool herbs. The interesting ones, I mean. Not, like, thyme.’

He briefly considered defending thyme’s honour against this attack, but figured that he had more important things to worry about. Like where Ransom and Holster were. And whether there would be a licenced electrician anywhere near the lighting set ups. And the fact that he was talking to someone who didn’t see any problem in adding “interesting” herbs to a large quantity of unknown ingredients and making the result available for general consumption.

‘No.’ he said.

Undeterred, Shitty continued, ‘Last hashtag epikegster, bro. Adulthood soon awaits us outside this oasis of irresponsibility and weed. Are you gonna join the party this time?’

‘No.’

‘It’s our last chaaaaance.’

‘No.’

‘Your dad says you should join in. He texted me to say that.’

The ladle was now pointed at him in accusation, while Shitty used his other hand to dump a small pile of ingredients that Jack could only describe as “miscellaneous” into the tub.

‘Where’s Lardo?’

The ladle pointed to the ceiling.

Well, at least she was nearby. Jack could deal with this now.

‘It’s tomorrow night!’ Shitty informed him, as he headed for the stairs.

‘Lardo…?’

He made it to the top of the stairs as her head popped out from Bitty’s room, ‘Oh. So you’ve noticed then.’

Feet set firmly into the carpet. Hands on hips. Try to look in control of the situation.

‘This is your jurisdiction.’ he informed her.

‘Nuh uh. This is a social activity for the enjoyment of the team. Falls under Team Member Maintenance. _Your_ jurisdiction, captain.’

The head slipped back into Bitty’s room and Jack took a deep breath, said her name once. Waited. Repeated her name with slightly less patience and waited for her face to return to his field of vision.

‘Anything else?’ she asked, sweetly.

 _Do that thing with your eyebrows that makes you look all serious_ , suggested the disembodied voice that had apparently followed him inside. Against all logic, Jack attempted to make his eyebrows look serious, ‘This is an _event_. Clearly. It falls under General Planning and Organisation, which makes you responsible. Manager.’

Bitty’s voice from inside the room: ‘I think Ransom and Holster seem to have it pretty much covered.’

‘Bits is right.’ she agreed, ‘R and H are sophomores now, I think we can trust them not to let anything get too far out of hand.’

‘But-’

‘Don’t worry about anything.’

‘You-’

‘I’ll keep an eye on them if you insist.’

‘Lard-’

‘Just relax for once. Maybe try to enjoy yourself this time, rather than staying in your room.’

With that, the conversation was over. Jack returned to the refuge of his herb-fragrant room and closed the door with the lightest _snick_. Telling himself a little too sternly not to get too anxious this time, he filled up his little glass watering can and began his rounds. His garden had grown in variety recently. Angelica, bee balm, and even the feathery, peppermint-scented leaves of a young fennel shrub that he’d ambitiously grown from seed without having any idea what to do when it got too big. There was no denying now, even to himself, that this living catalogue had causative links with the kitchen conversations with Bitty.

The soil of the valerian felt a little dry. He’d been taking extra care to keep the root of this healthy, given that this was the most useful part. But for a moment he was full of regret that the plant was destined to be pulled from its pot for some brew or another, when all those pink buds and little white flowers smelt like heaven. Even Bitty had commented, which had made Jack suddenly remember Kent’s specific fondness for the blossoms back in Montreal.

‘I’m getting ready for bed now,’ he told the room at large, in an undertone, ‘so if you could just…’

_Don’t worry, we won’t hang around._

_But we’ll see you tomorrow, of course. Big day, hallowe’en._

Jack nodded his response awkwardly to the air.

_Oh, and… not that we don’t like the usual bread…_

_Yeah, we’re grateful and all…_

_But, it’s just…_

_It’s not very…_

_Well… exciting…_

Samhain. The first day of the darker half of the year. Jack had always left bread out for the spirits of whatever description who may be taking advantage of the weaker barriers between worlds. Never in his life had he considered the culinary merit of the bread.

‘Consider it done.’ he said, but the silence suggested that they’d already left.

._/

Jack dreamed of fire.

Nothing deadly. Not the searing, too-close-to-the-flame feeling of a scared animal choking on smoke as it ran. Not the black skeleton of a house making its stand lit up like a biblical demon. Not the rush and the roar and the silence, the _while o’er him fast, through sale and shroud, the wreathing fires made way_ of Casabianca.

Figures on a hillside. The only features visible where the red glimmered off the shadowy black. Night had fallen thick over them by now, and the last members of the congregation made their way through the twin bonfires. And the edge of the glow, faint, were the pale forms of long-gone people that the revellers in the light would only be able to see – if at all – out of the corners of their eyes.

Jack himself was one of those ghostly figures, but he didn’t really belong there. He wasn’t really dead. Not anymore.

And the living took up their torches and lit them by the bonfire. They could be seen shrinking into pinpricks in the valley below, splitting off into individuals and clusters, then disappearing indoors. The blackness lasted only until the house itself was lit up from the windows. The hearths and lights – so carefully extinguished – being lit up by the flames.

There was nothing supernatural about this dream. Just longing. It was a tradition that had lasted millennia, almost vanquished until the tide of public opinion turned and people began talking about _culture_ and _heritage_. Yet for Jack this wasn’t some Celtic celebration of history. It was faith, but not one of the big ones, and so it was something that he knew to keep his mouth shut about. While asleep his mind could conjure up partygoers filing out of the kegster, cradling tealights in their hands that were lit from the tiki torches outside the door – the best Jack had been able to introduce to the hallowe’en plans – and taking them home for the winter.

(As a teenager, he and Kent had competed to see who could hold their palm over a candle for the longest, and Jack could swear that he could still feel the flame at his skin for hours afterwards.)

But that wasn’t going to happen. Besides, the popular rejection was part of what made it witchcraft; all those hunted faiths whose knowledge and lore eventually ended up scattered to the wind had always found shelter in the witches’ books. Their purpose was simply not to forget.

._/

Having been reliably informed by every piece of media he’d ever consumed that French food was in a class of its own, Jack struck out the next afternoon in search of a bakery run by French people or dedicated hipsters.

Café Sucre (which Jack charitably interpreted as “a café named Sugar” instead of “Grammatically Incorrect Sugar Coffee”) turned out to be neither. Aesthetics appeared to have been neglected for enticing patrons in by smell, and the owner was a middle-aged Canadian who greeting Jack my name. He left with a paper bag of _chocolatines_ and _mille-feuilles_ with their hard, marblesque tops; sticky _religiesues_ kept delicately separate; an entire _flaugnarde_ – that warm, heavy disc of sweetness and spice – that recalled some lost event of his youth; tins of rich _calissons_ and _mendiants_ , a little further from the tradition of giving bread, but he figured there was no harm in it; and a handful of _madelines_ that Jack intended to eat most of before sundown ushered in Samhain. He’d hovered, abruptly hungry, over _dacquoises_ and _darioles_ from Provence and a heavy _tarte Tatin_ that would have never survived the return trip. This much unapologetic delight of the senses almost made him forget for the moment that the modern world had tried so hard to drain itself of magic. Was this not, after all, the other meaning of the word “pagan”? All those pious moralists from so long ago, making farces of themselves in the eyes of history, who proudly proclaimed all the best colours and delights to be some heathen sort of decadence. It had never really seemed like an insult.

Warmth still radiated from the bag as he travelled back. With it clutched to his chest, he could smell the exquisite flavours that were too… _Parisian_ … to remind him of home, but recalled a little Veitnamese restaurant near his house, that transformed itself into the most utterly French café during the day. Saigon-Paris, it was called, and the aging owners would give unaccountably comic summaries of the history they’d fled from to any customer who’d listen. Jack had kept his ears open through the tales, as he’d self-consciously dip a breakfast croissant into dark espresso like adults do, pretending that it wasn’t far too bitter to be enjoyable.

Bitty was on him like a bloodhound as he closed the front door.

‘Um-’

‘What d’ya have there?’

Jack looked into the paper bag and irrationally considered lying.

‘…food.’ he eventually admitted.

He tried slipping discretely past, but Bitty wasn’t leaving his heel. With an accent becoming somehow more Georgian by the second, he mentioned, ‘I would’ve baked you something if you asked.’

Upstairs. Surely Bitty wouldn’t follow him into his room.

‘I- I didn’t want to trouble you. And. It’s French food.’

‘Gosh, I’d love to try my hand at making French food,’ – a significant pause – ‘but not today, I guess.’

They’d made it to the landing, and Jack fished around for ways to end the conversation.

‘Look, I’m sorry, I just didn’t think-’

‘No, there’s nothing to apologise for-’

‘-I’d have asked you, but it’s for, well-’

‘-you don’t need to tell me, I can respect your personal life-’

‘-It’s not like I’m keeping secrets-’

‘-Hush. I’m not mad.’

They looked at each other in silence, Jack wishing fervently (and not for the first time) that he was better at reading people. Then all at once he blurted out, ‘I bought this food for ghosts.’

Bitty blinked, ‘Oh.’

‘It’s for Samhain, I mean. It’s… tradition? I… sort of… I leave bread out for ghosts. It’s a thing.’

He shifted the bag awkwardly in his arms until it formed some pastry shield between him and Bitty.

‘Are you suggesting that ghosts wouldn’t like my food?’

‘No, I’m- I’m sure they’d love- I’ll ask you next time, then.’ At Bitty’s expression he remembered graduation and added, ‘For Beltaine. It’s a thing then, too. First of May.’

‘I’ll make a note.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay.’

They went their separate ways, Jack shutting his door and dropping onto his bed to nervously chew a _madeline_. That was weird. Was that weird? Was _he_ weird?

Were the ghosts watching him embarrass himself?

He ate another of the little shell-shaped treats for something to do, and watched the hazy Boston sun lower itself labouriously below the skyline.

The food, he settled into its usual corner of the reading room. By now he could hear talking rising from the floor below, laughter, the first strains of music. With his headphones charging next to the bed in preparation, he began the task of deciding what to read for the evening.

More laughter. Was that Bitty, or was he just imagining it?

Nothing on his bookshelf sparked his interest. Thinking that it was too early in the evening to be frustrated, he turned his attention to the documentaries on his laptop.

He could sense, more that see, the coloured lights beginning to shine.

Nothing of interest there either. Nor was the seemingly endless library of YouTube offering up anything that captured his attention for more than a few seconds. This, he acknowledged, was stupid. And with that thought he returned to his bookshelves for another look.

It was his last epikegster. If he could just work up a little courage…

He was already regretting the decision by the time he stepped downstairs.

Too late, he realised that his headphones were still on his bedside cabinet. But then, he would probably look strange wearing them down here. He was just going to have to deal with the pounding music as he hovered around the lower floor, endeavouring simply to stay a normal amount of time before slipping back upstairs without (hopefully) anyone thinking him too weird.

Maybe he should get a drink. That seemed like a natural thing to do, and something that would at least keep his hands busy and make him appear as if he had purpose as he navigated through the moving crowd alone.

Not tub juice. Maybe a beer. A light beer.

With most of the drinks stocked in one area of the Haus – in what the team’s best defencemen must optimistically have considered akin to a bar – the strong smell of alcohol hovered as an invisible but almost tangible fog there, momentarily thrilling Jack with fear of what would happen were someone to light a match. The night was far too young for the sensory abuse that tended to accompany the four AM sort of frat-house-witching-hour. Instead, the poison on the air toed the line between nauseating and… nostalgic.

He’d get himself a very light beer indeed.

Was that enough? Had he stayed down for a sufficient amount of time to return back upstairs without comment? But it didn’t seem right not to interact with someone, and with Bitty appearing in his line of vision he made a beeline towards him before remembering their earlier conversation. He still wasn’t sure if they were arguing. It had felt like an argument, but a very… nice… argument. Maybe he could get past without Bitty-

‘Jack!’

Never mind.

Bitty made some observation about how Jack rarely showed his face at these events, and he found himself replying with some words that he hoped sounded normal enough.

The man was rude enough to seem thoroughly engaged in the conversation. It wasn’t as if it was a convenient place to talk. The music was so loud it had begun to crowd out the information of his other senses, let alone the sounds he was struggling to hear above it.

What was he drinking?

Jack held the plastic cup with both hands just to stop himself from signing rather than speaking through the din. He explained that it was weak beer. _Very_ weak (not that there was any reason why he should feel the need to assure Bitty about his own self-control). If fact – he tasted it – it might just be apple juice. Something organic from a glass bottle, anyway.

A laugh, though Jack couldn’t work out what he’d said that was funny. What did he think of the kegster?

Loud. That’s what he thought of it.

A nodded acknowledgement and an offhand comment about kegsters past. Soon Jack found himself recounting the story of his standoff with the Samwell football team. It seemed to go well. Bitty laughed in all the right places and, when he reached the bit about the fire extinguisher, he actually gasped.

Jack felt the sudden urge to record this moment. He said so to Bitty, whose phone was instantaneously in his hand. Before he could fully appreciate the magic trick, he was lowering himself to Bitty’s height and looking at their two smiling faces on the phone screen. It was a memorable moment, for reasons of friendship and laughter and all those good things. The next moment was memorable too, for entirely different reasons.

Kent had always had a knack for dramatic entrances.

With some offhanded line that Kent had almost certainly planned hours in advance, Jack was filled with that familiar this-is-something-you’re-going-to-have-to-deal-with-whether-you-like-it-or-not feeling. Through his own surprise, he became aware of a gradual whirlwind start to accelerate around the man. Everything would be autographs and photos, and Jack took the chance to vanish upstairs again.

He aimed for the sanctuary of his room, only to find two young women chatting in there. They barely looked up when he entered.

‘Um. I don’t mean to interrupt…’ he began, ‘but this is my room, and, erm.’

‘It’s fine,’ one replied brightly, ‘we don’t mind if you stay.’

‘Well, that’s not really what I…’

They’d turned their attention away from him again. Time to change tact.

‘Okay. So. Not to be rude but I have… a couple of questions.’

The girls turned to face him again and he told himself to start with the obvious and build up to asking them to leave.

‘First. Um. How… are you… not touching the floor?’

‘Oh, we have no physical substance.’

‘It’s great,’ the other added, ‘we can eat as many of these pastries as we want, and it doesn’t affect our ability to fly _at all_.’

‘Thanks for those, by the way.’

‘They’re so much better than the bread.’

Okay, so, he could see ghosts. That was new. Hopefully, this particular ability was limited to special situations like Samhain, and not a sign of some additional responsibility.

‘I’m glad you like it.’ he said weakly, ‘Erm. I did leave it outside, though.’

‘Yeah, you do seem a stickler for tradition. I hope you don’t mind us eating in here?’

‘Well, it’s just that I’m about to-’

As usually, Kent knocked on the door _after_ he’d opened it. Of all his annoying habits, that was second only to the incessant dying.

‘Hey, Zimms.’ he said, ‘Did I hear you talking to someone?’

He frowned past both the ghosts (one of whom was giggling, while the other performed some elaborate semaphores as if attempting to get Kent’s attention) and into the shadowy corners of the room, as if someone might be hiding somewhere.

_So I’m the only one who can see them, then? That’s not unnerving at all._

‘Nope.’ Jack lied.

‘…Okay then.’

Behind Kent’s back, one of the pair was slowly drawing a madeline from the paper bag, snacking on it as if it were popcorn during a fascinating movie. Jack resisted the urge to ask Kent why he was there, and instead waited to see what was about to happen.

‘Senior year.’ he began, in a voice heavy with significance.

‘Yeah.’ Jack agreed.

‘You nervous?’

He was on the very edge of answering his generic “I’m fine, you?” before he was forced to acknowledge that that wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever in this situation, ‘Not much,’ he said instead, ‘I’ve been getting pretty good grades so I’m not concerned about not graduating or anything.’

At the blatant look of confusion on Kent’s face, Jack fleetingly wondered if he knew so little about college that he’d have to explain how grades work. But then, ‘I was talking about hockey. The NHL? Aiming for the Stanley Cup? Y’know, your lifelong dream?’

It took a few moments for his brain to close all its windows and open the correct programme for the situation, ‘Right. Yeah, that.’

‘That.’ Kent agreed, ‘Any idea who you’ll be playing for?’

He thought of the blue house. Relaxing in the place that felt like home while the overcast days drifted past the windows. The way the air sometimes seemed to taste just a little like salt… if he could only think hard enough to drag some clue out of his memory (if that’s what it could be called), he might be able to locate it on the map.

And he thought of rain-soaked apartment windows, and of an underground station that filled with the dense heat of the crowd, and fragments of maps of cities he didn’t recognise, and all the other possibilities that insinuated themselves into his vision of the future.

‘No.’ he admitted.

‘…You have no clue?’

That expression meant something, but Jack wasn’t good at reading expressions at the best of times and Kent, well. Kent was a complicated person.

‘I mean… it could be Montreal,’ he heard himself say. And then, because there was no way to know what Kent would make of the idea that Jack was thinking of playing for his father’s old team, quickly added the name of the city furthest away from Montreal, ‘it could be LA, okay?’ But, wait, Kent hated the Kings. So he threw in the hasty disclaimer, ‘I don’t know.’

Another _expression_. Only this one was explained almost immediately.

‘…What about Las Vegas?’

Shit.

Did Kent just…?

 _Vegas_.

Kent was watching Jack think. Jack was trying to think but somehow couldn’t do anything but watch Kent watching him. Should the suggestion have been such a surprise? Did the Aces management know that Kent was there? The unknowable futures spread out in the space between them, like infinite divisibility; halving a number over and over again would bring you closer to zero without ever reaching it. Every two possibilities had infinite variations between them, but that only left him with the paralyzing intuition that every tiny decision that he made – ever second that dripped from fluid future to concrete past – were somehow making impossible whole swaths of possibilities.

It was an echo of that half-wraith panic, which occasionally raised its head to remind him that there was no sin like wasting a life. From the moment he tried to conjure an image of life in Vegas, all he could think was that the sun would bleach the blue paint of his house.

These feelings didn’t come in words. It was Jenny-or-Mandy who responded, ‘Is he asking you to move to Vegas?’

‘…Are you asking me to move to Vegas?’ Jack immediately said, mostly because he really needed something to say and that, at least, made sense.

‘No.’ Kent responded, at once a) to quickly, b) laughably defensibly, and c) from behind an uncharacteristic but deep blush. Then, ‘…Sort of?’

One of the ghosts whispered, ‘Holy _shit_.’

‘Kent-’

‘Yes. Alright? Yes, come to Vegas with me. It could be like the Memorial Cup, if you wanted, except this time we’d get it right.’

‘…We won the Memorial Cup.’ he pointed out.

‘That’s not what I mean. Do you remember what we were doing two weeks after the draft? Do you remember… if that counts as “getting it right” then why are we even trying?’

Two weeks was the exact length of time that Kent Parson, first overall draft pick, had been a prospect for the Las Vegas Aces. Not even the strictest of the Commissioner’s elaborate contractual arrangements to keep the players in line would bring someone back from the dead. But never mind, that was a version of events that didn’t happen.

He was standing rather close.

‘And you still want to be on the same team?’ he asked, suddenly recalling all those things they’d dreamt when they were young and dreams seemed harmless, ‘Taking on the league together, winning the Stanley Cup side-by-side, the whole thing?’

‘Of course I do, Zimms. That never changed.’

They were too close, and Kent was too earnest now, fixing him with eyes somewhere on the edge of grey. Any moment now he was going to say “I miss you” again, like he always did, and Jack was going to wonder for a thrilling moment if they could solve everything if he’d just return the nicety. And then he’d open his mouth and out would come whatever answer befitted a life shot through with doubt.

He’d never seemed to want to hear Kent tell him that, anyway. It was all some airport romance that had gone on far too long, bordering on farce, and such an uninspiring line like “I miss you” seemed too generic to address this mess. So, to stop him speaking, Jack kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side note: There is literally a bakery in my home town called Saigon-Paris. Only they haven't really maintained the style that the name suggests and instead is like pretty much every bakery here. Meat pies, sandwiches, lamingtons, that sort of thing. I embellished


	4. Remedies prescribed for those who are Bewitched by being Inflamed with Inordinate Love or Extraordinary Hatred

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's probably still yesterday in most places but in New Zealand it's Saint Patrick's Day. Which means that it's the twenty-eighth anniversary of the Isabella Gardner theft. This doesn't come up at all in this chapter, but I still figured it'd be a nice way to mark the day.

This was too Versailles for the Westphalia ideal. The peace, Jack knew, was so fragile that it was almost irresponsible. Not everything could be fixed with a simple kiss, no matter what the fairy tales said, no matter how the ghostly audience had cheered, no matter how much Jack had felt that this was somehow just _right_.

Of course, it wasn’t just one kiss. It was another in the quiet moments between their conversations, and before they headed down for breakfast the next morning. It was wondering if they were being a little too obvious as they ate the pancakes that Kent had allowed Bitty to make with some grace. Texts and jokes and little stories, and keeping up with the subplots of each others’ lives. It was Jack staring at the ceiling at night and trying to conjure up an idea of his future life if he did play in Vegas.

It was rare that something seemed to work out so well for him, and so easily. Now the only problems that he had left to solve were

Well

Pretty much everything else in his life.

‘Sorry, Karen, but if you don’t mind me asking-’

‘Officer Smythe.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s Officer Smythe, to you. Not Karen.’

She had a friendly face and a Minnesota accent that made him think outrageously of all the police officers in _Fargo_.

‘Officer Smythe. Sorry. It’s just, where is Hem- Officer Erangi?’

Unlike Hemi, Karen didn’t seem to find it necessary to carry in piles of paper in manila folders marked “Zimmermann”. Maybe she didn’t think there was anything suspicious going on. Maybe Hemi was seen as, like, some sort of occasional conspiracy theorist who should probably stop worrying about Jack. At least that would explain why he was the only police officer who ever seemed to deal with him.

‘At a funeral.’

‘…Oh.’

A perfectly normal thing that happened all the time, he reminded himself. There was no reason for this to be a surprise. Jack realised then that he’d never considered Hemi actually existing outside of these claustrophobic interview rooms.

‘Give him my condolences.’

‘He wouldn’t be interested.’

‘Right.’

He was going for a run. Which is to say, at the very least, that there definitely was some running involved in there somewhere. Karen took his statement with a practiced boredom, condensing everything into the briefest possible length of time and then ushering him out like an overstaying guest. It was all very quick and (in theory at least) painless; he even made it back to the Haus in time for a Skype date with his… boyfriend? …something… his Kent.

“Date” was a pretty interesting term, anyway. They apparently knew each other too well for things like “hello”, and Jack had barely opened his mouth to speak before Kent was interrupting with, ‘I need to know I’m being ridiculous.’

He shrugged, ‘You pretty much always are.’

‘Not what I meant. It’s a hockey thing.’

‘Oh, are you talking about your poor scoring record as of late?’

‘Ye-’

‘And how people are talking about how you’re in a slump and questioning whether you can keep playing at the same level you’ve been playing at or if it’s a long slide down to retirement from here?’

Kent’s Look lasted for long enough that he thought for a moment that the internet was lagging.

‘Yes. That.’

‘Sorry. I’ll shut up.’

‘No, wait, don’t do that. Do the opposite of that. I need to borrow your anxiety real quick.’

Jack’s pause was part for effect and part to give himself time to come up with a smart response. Falling short of that, he settled for, ‘By all means. If you can work out how to get it off me I’ll let you keep it forever.’

‘Just…’ – a complicated gesture that encompassed the shortcomings of language without managing to actually aid Jack’s understanding – ‘Tell me about how this means I’m a total failure or something. Whatever your anxiety would come up with in this situation.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that stuff sounds completely crazy when you say it out loud and that would help me relax about this whole thing.’

It was a good point. He’d had enough difficulty explaining that he _knew_ that forgetting to tap five times on the window frame wouldn’t cause the rare nightmares he’d had to come true, same as he knew that the first two seconds of water out of a tap was perfectly clean and healthy and unpoisoned, and that if he didn’t see some ghost or intruder or monster of giant spider in his room while he was getting ready, flicking the lights on again for a split second wasn’t going to reveal anything. And that was just OCD.

He also knew from the other side of the experience how things that seemed to make so much sense could suddenly sound ridiculous out loud. But, unlike Jack’s witchcraft, Kent’s lifelong Catholicism had the advantage of being one of those Recognised religions.

‘Um… everyone hates you?’

‘Not very creative but I guess it’s a good start.’

Hearing anxieties out loud was like watching situational comedy without the laugh track. The actual content of the fears just didn’t read so well if they weren’t accompanied by an inescapable sense of impending doom.

Jack shrugged and tried again, ‘People are reverting to calling Patrick Kane the best US-born player alive right now.’

Kent pulled a horrified face and responded, ‘That one’s actually a bit too believable. It’s a good motivator, though.’

‘You’ve completely lost your knack. You’ll never score another goal. They’ll revoke you Calder and your Cup rings and send you back down to a farm team. You’ll be so unknown that people will start thinking you’re named after your cat rather than the other way around.’

‘Why would my cat still be famous?’

‘Kit Purrson is a difficult creature to forget.’

‘Good point. Go on.’

‘Late night comedy shows will make jokes about you. You’ll be the Tonya Harding of the hockey world, only in that she managed to be actually famous even though no one really pays attention to the sport. That’ll be you. People everywhere will be saying things like “I don’t follow hockey, but I heard that that Kent Parson is terrible at it”. You’ll be refused entry to Canada forever.’

‘Now you’re just making jokes.’

‘Alright, alright. How about… everything that you’ve achieved up until this point has been a complete fluke and you’ve never actually been good at hockey at all, and now other people are going to realise that.’

‘Perfect.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, I’m feeling much better. Now, what were you going to say?’

Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – it was best to just say the crazy-sounding thing all at once before you get too worked up trying to make it seem normal. Jack took a deep breath and blurted out, ‘If I know someone knows someone who died, how do I find stuff out about the dead person?’

Kent gave him a long, surveying look, before typing a few keys on his computer and replying, ‘This sounds like a good time for you to explain something about your powers that’s been bothering me.’

It didn’t sound like a good time for that at all, but Jack let him continue.

‘Given the huge number of people who die every day, and given that your version of a vision is to relive the whole time period over again, how do you know who you’re supposed to save?’

It had been bothering Jack for some time, too, ‘I don’t really know. I just… do.’

‘And this is one of those times?’

‘Possibly…?’

‘So you think that this is a vision?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Alright, fine. Who’s the person who knows the dead person?’

‘Hemi Erangi. The police officer. I’m sure I’ve told you about him.’

Pausing only to give Jack another of those only-partially-comprehensible Looks, Kent began typing.

_Maybe a sidekick is useful, after all._

‘How long is this going to-’

‘Done.’ Kent interrupted, but his smirk vanished as he read a little further, ‘Oh. Ouch. It’s his daughter, Ing- Ng-ire… Near- help me out, you know how to pronounce “Erangi”?’

He typed it in the text box at the bottom, and Jack read

            **Kent:**                Ngiare

‘…It’s something Māori, I guess. How did you-’

‘Facebook.’ he answered, concisely, ‘Jeez, she was the same age you were when you… well… she was nineteen.’

Somewhere in that part of his memory that he’d always been most keen to bury, _la rousse_ reappeared. The redhead, and that was pretty much all he had ever known about her; she had red hair, she was nineteen, she was killed in hospital by something so arbitrary as an allergy.

For once, Kent actually seemed to understand one of the problems inside Jack’s head, because he held his tongue for a few moments while Jack thought about La Rousse, only speaking up to say, ‘I’ve found a pronunciation guide. Apparently it’s Ny-ree. There’s a lot more Māori on the Facebook page that I’ll see if I can translate.’

That eased his mind a little; now that he knew her name properly she became a little further removed from La Rousse. And so it was with a little more detachment that he could read about the teenager who’d accepted a lift from a drunk driver and had been left to die when the boy had fled the crash scene on foot, panicked.

The first term he learnt was _te reo_. As in, te reo Māori: the Māori language. Other te reo words included:

            **Aroha:** (a·ɾu·ha) Love

            **Aotearoa:** (aʊ·teə·ɾʊə) _lit_. land of the long white cloud. New Zealand

            **Karakia:** (kaɾ·a·ki·a) Prayer

            **Kia Kaha:** (ki·a·ka·ha) Stand strong

            **Tamāhine:** (ta·a:·hi·nɛ) Daughter

            **Taonga:** (taʊ·ŋa) Commonly translated as “treasure”; any precious thing

            **Whakapapa:** (fa·ka·pa·pa) Genealogy. Ancestry

            **Whānau:** (fa:·noʊ) Family, including extended family

            **Whenua:** (fɛn·u·ʌ) Land, place of origin. Commonly used in “tangata whenua”; the first people of a place.

Jack felt a little heartsick. He felt like an intruder on this page, where people discussed in ancient concepts that he couldn’t understand about where Ngaire should be buried, Boston or New Zealand, and offered condolences that dripped in cultural tradition but nonetheless could not escape the universal language of platitudes.

He’d never met this woman. A connection through a third party felt a little tenuous, even by the standards of his powers. And yet, he couldn’t help but think _c’mon, be kind. She’s only nineteen._

‘Patron saint of second chances.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You, I’m talking about. Or some sort of lesser god, or whatever it is that would make sense in your religion. Second chances are sort of your whole thing.’

Jack turned his attention back to the dead girl with the thick black hair, ‘She didn’t even make that much of a mistake. Not like me.’

‘Or me.’ Kent pointed out, ‘But I suppose it’s more of a description. Doesn’t really have a superhero ring to it.’

‘I’m not-’

‘I could call you Captain Psychic, or something.’

His objections to being thought of as a superhero aside, that name was objectively terrible.

‘And I could call you the Cowlick Kid.’

‘I’m older than you.’

‘One month, Parse. And you’re shorter.’

‘I’m _average height_. That cute pancake guy should be the Cowlick Kid.’

Jack didn’t even have a chance to speak before Kent was backtracking.

‘Let me rephrase.’

‘Too late.’

‘Aw, don’t be like that. I think you’re cute too, if it helps- stop smiling like that, why is this funny?’

Jack had called to mind Bitty’s deep scowl while being prevailed upon to at least use Kent’s chocolate chips, ‘You mean Bitty? I didn’t think he was your type. Seems too… perky?’

‘ _Pleasedon’ttellhimIsaidthat_.’

‘It’s so rare for you to blush-’

‘Shouldn’t you be a bit jealous or something-’

‘It’s too funny-’

‘Jack-’

‘Alright _fine_.’ Jack finally agreed, throwing up his hands, ‘I won’t tell him. But only because I’m not going to out you without your permission.’

Kent had to leave shortly after that, off towards the locker room with Jack’s last “don’t forget that this is almost certainly going to be the worst game that you’ve ever played” to keep his confidence up. He closed the window with a hopeful sort of feeling. It had gone well, once again they hadn’t come close to arguing about something confusing, and this time Kent hadn’t even brought up Jack’s future career.

[Vegas – at least, he figured it must have been Vegas, when he’d finally considered the possibility seriously enough for his mind to conjure up an image of that particular future – was all dry heat that seemed to linger on his skin like sand, and internal fight between anxiety and something that might have been love, and the image of the interloper Zimmermann, a failure but for the grace of Kent Parson. But there was also a glimpse of the feeling that _this_ , at least, was easy; what it was referring to could only be guessed at, but it was a thought that always accompanied the image of Kent’s twin talismans hanging loosely over a shirt. Some light source had caught them in a moment; the Luna-shine of that moonstone charm, on a shorter chain that the Sol-esque flash of his gold Saint Christopher’s.]

Jack turned to a new page of that notebook he kept under the Bluetooth earpiece and the training lock and all the other paraphernalia of his most closely guarded secrets. At the very top of the page he wrote out _Ngaire Erangi_.

._X_

So many stories described rows of graves as some alien set of broken teeth that, when Jack surveyed those spreading out before him, he couldn’t tell if the comparison that came to mind was due to the actual appearance or the many attempts at metaphor of authors past.

These were the old ones; dead Puritans beneath uniform grey, crooked, faded, streaked with long-forgotten weather. Further away from the old church, scattered trees grew. They threw dappled light on the graves nearby, which grew in variety as the dates marched on. Even this side of the Atlantic, the Victorians had turned the trappings of death into, if not art, then at least fashion. Stained angels shared the space with tall pillars that had long since lost the sculptures on the top. Generations of families were huddled behind spiked iron fences, some even with stairs like a bleak and bizarre front yard. Other fences enclosed single plots; stone mounds like latter-day sarcophagi, flat slabs of dull grey, or remnants of a broken covering over now-sunken earth that since childhood Jack had always imagined as gateways to sinister worlds. Here and there stood small mausoleums decked out in that curiously American neo-classical style, heavy with columns like miniature banks, as if those rotting inside were seizing one last opportunity to cast themselves as a lesser Caesar.

It was just past there that the flowers started. A little further on was some strange sort of no man’s land between the pseudo-park of the dead and the land-hungry city of the living. There were still mourners at this frontier, and here an old beech, and there the hint of a creek. It was a different world from the old graves. Here was proud, clean black granite that was just so much more unsettling. He’d always preferred a broken grave, but then, he’d always thought that the kindest death had been granted those who were eventually forgotten. Graves were built for mourners, and there seemed nothing wrong with them falling to ruin when there was no more comfort needed. Jack caught sight of a soft toy on a small grave and turned away.

Somehow the creek was clean. Wherever it began and ended, the city left it untouched. And at the edge of one quiet meander, green in the greenness around it, was a dark stone seat.

Most of it was the colour of deep pine forests, interrupted only by the laser-printed scars of some ponderous spiral pattern and a single fern. In the centre, in marble, was the simple inscription: _In loving memory of Ngaire Erangi, 1996-2015._ Her real grave was back in New Zealand with her whānau. This, probably, was for her father alone.

Jack had no idea what he’d been expecting to learn by coming here.

People tended to say things in this situation, didn’t they? But what, precisely, did Jack have to say? Somehow “I’m sorry to intrude, I’m only here because my life is really weird” didn’t seem to work and, anyway, this was only a chair. Did people speak to memorial chairs? They spoke to gravestones, sure, and it wasn’t like those were any better at listening than were chairs. But maybe this was one degree of separation too far from actual human life. So he stood there, and felt awkward, and the silence was only broken when someone said his name.

Hemi had been crying. For a moment the image reminded him so forcefully of his own father crying in that hospital room that he very nearly promised himself to never have children of his own.

 _You’re an idiot_ , he reminded himself, matter-of-factly, _and this isn’t even your anxiety speaking this time. This is your logic. She only just died, dumbass, how did it not occur to you that Hemi might be here?_

‘What are you doing here?’

_Don’t say that you were going for a run. He’d probably punch you._

‘I… have no idea.’ he answered, honestly.

That expression was well beyond Jack’s admittedly less-than-world-class ability to read faces. Eventually, he said, ‘Well, congratulations. You’ve caught me at the one time when I couldn’t care less what the hell it is you’re up to-’

Jack hadn’t really been listening when he cut Hemi off. See, he always knew somewhere in the most stubbornly logical part of his brain that this “powers” (for want of a better word) were completely unpredictable. And yet, Kent had been right when he’d asked how Jack knew who he had to save. An utterly unanswerable question. He just _did_ , somehow. And now he could feel rising the overwhelming sense…

‘I have psychic powers.’ he blurted out.

_…that this was just a vision._

‘…I’m sorry?’

Jack somehow managed to repeat himself through the immediate wave of doubt flooding his mind.

And then there was a heavy pause; Jack, Hemi, and the complete absence of the girl called Ngaire, waiting in silence to see what would happen next. Hemi put a hand on his shoulder and Jack, feeling that this was a fragile sort of moment, managed not to object.

‘I want you to know,’ Hemi began, ‘from the very bottom of my heart, that I am always professional. I aspire to perform my duties like a judge; “without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”. But, despite that… Mr Zimmermann… I want you to know that every time you say something to me, I am thinking _why won’t this rich Pakeha kid shut the fuck up?_ ’

‘…’ said Jack.

‘Pakeha means white person.’ Hemi clarified.

‘Noted.’

‘Good. Now sit down.’

Somehow, memorials didn’t seem like the most respectful things to sit on. Even memorials shaped like chairs. Maybe in a park – one of those wooden things with the little markers informing people that someone they’d never heard of had once existed on that little section of the planet – but not heavy stone things in graveyards. Briefly, he flirted with the idea of leaping over the little creek and just sprinting away, but the decision was made instead by his own traitorous knees making the executive decision to sit down.

Hemi took the seat next to him, solemnly, and arranged his face into a peculiar expression.

‘Listen,’ he said, and Jack (who had thought he’d been listening quite attentively, as it happened) endeavoured to more obviously pay attention, ‘You don’t have psychic powers, okay? That seems like a good starting point. People don’t have psychic powers. They just don’t.’

One of Jack’s earliest memory-that-he’d-unsuccessfully-tried-to-supress was of an elementary school teacher telling him to stop crying over the texture of the cheap glue they were using and how it felt when it got on his hands; all sensibleness and hands on hips and _it doesn’t hurt. It’s just glue, glue doesn’t hurt one bit, look at the other kids…_ which, of course, was absurd. It _did_ hurt. That was simple fact. Denying it didn’t make any sense at all.

It struck him then that what Hemi was saying was exactly the same. He may as well have assured Jack that there was no such thing as Boston, when it was right there, looming over the graveyard.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Jack replied, before he’d actually thought about it, ‘Of course people have psychic powers.’

‘I’ve never met anyone whose actually been able to demonstrate psychic powers-’

‘So? I’ve never been to the state of Arkansas, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.’

A side note followed:

[‘You’ve been in the country longer than me…’

‘It’s one of the ones in the middle. Not the corn ones. The Jim Crow ones.’]

‘Look,’ Hemi said; a change of tact from “listen”, Jack guessed, ‘I’m not going to argue with you about this. You know why?’

Jack had seen enough television shows to feel that he could safely guess what Hemi was about to say. And, yet, he let him say it.

‘It’s because I don’t believe that you’re lying. I believe that _you_ believe what you’re saying.’

‘I _do_ believe what I’m saying.’ Jack confirmed, ‘But not because I’m crazy, because it’s true.’

Hemi was already shaking his head halfway through, ‘I wouldn’t use the word “crazy”. I won’t judge you for being mentally ill.’

For once, his brain actually decided to make itself useful in coming up with something to say. Something conveniently ambiguous: ‘I believe it because it’s true, not because I’m mentally ill. Better?’ And then he was left to wonder which of two ways Hemi would take it:

  1. I am not mentally ill; or
  2. My mental illness/mental illnesses are not the reason why I believe that I have psychic powers.



The peculiar expression somehow became even odder, and soon Hemi was saying, ‘There’s nothing wrong with being mentally ill, so there’s no reason to sound so defensive.’ and Jack realised that there was a third potential reading along the lines of:

  1. I’m not mentally ill and also I’m one of those douchebag neurotypicals.



_Marde_.

‘I’m not being defensive.’ Jack said, defensively.

‘…Well, I did say I’m not going to argue with you.’

– and then Jack understood what the peculiar expression was. It was _kindness_. But not real kindness, which Jack had no reason to doubt came naturally to the man. It was Hollywood kindness. It was Hemi’s attempt at the sort of manner that he seemed to think was expected in a conversation like this. No doubt it was part of his police training at some point, although if Jack were feeling uncharitable he may have suspected that Hemi had simply read a textbook chapter entitled _How to Lend a Sympathetic Ear to People in Difficult Situations_ , but had yet to test in out. The chapter probably opened with advising the prospective officer to say “mentally ill” instead of “crazy”

– ‘But I do know that you’ve been through a lot…’

_No kidding._

‘…you know, my daughter, Ngaire, she’s the same age as you when you were…’

_Yeah, I know._

‘…and I recently found out about that abuse complaint against your father when you were a child…’

_…_

‘…Zimmermann?’

_…?_

‘…Jack?’

‘I’m sorry, what was that last bit again?’

Hemi must have sensed that this was a delicate bit of the conversation, because the expression changed from peculiar to down-right unnerving, ‘We got some information from Quebec-’

‘And it accused my dad of child abuse?’

Hemi blinked. And then he blinked again, apparently for something to do, ‘…I wasn’t expecting this to be news to you?’

 _‘Wasn’t expecting…’_ Jack began to repeat, but he cut himself off. Remembered where he was: This was a newly grieving father in front of him. One, moreover, who’d shown up to visit his nineteen-year-old daughter’s memorial in peace and hadn’t expected to see an irksome habitual interogatee there, but who’d still decided to try (albeit badly) some kindness. Maybe there was nothing to be done about the fact that Jack had the nerve to survive his own tragedy at nineteen, but angrily defending someone whom Hemi apparently thought was an abusive father probably wasn’t going to make the man feel any better about the levels of fairness that exist in the world.

Instead, he aimed for _this was a bad idea_. But that, too, froze on his lips, unable to overcome the fact that this didn’t precisely feel like an idea at all. He had absolutely no clue what information he was supposed to have gathered at this place, but it certainly hadn’t materialised.

‘I have to go.’ he heard himself say, ‘I’m late for-’ a fraction of a second’s pause as it dawned on him that he should have thought of an excuse _before_ he started the sentence so he wouldn’t be forced to say the first thing that popped into his head, ‘-geese.’

 _That was stupid even by my standards_.

‘Geese?’

‘Photos.’ he added, ‘Of geese. It’s for a course.’

But whether Hemi believed him or not was something that Jack would never know, because he forwent waiting to judge the reaction in favour of merely striding away as quickly as a pseudo-casual pace would take him. Away from Hemi and the memory of Ngaire and the shiny new graves with the fresh new flowers; past where the flowers were wilting and brown, and then past the graves where there were no flowers at all, just weeds and verdigris speckles of lichen. The angels, the grand mausoleums, the fenced-off family graves. Finally through the trees, feeling oddly exposed among the broken-teeth-graves of the puritans.

It was only on reaching the shadow of the old church – a narrow thing built for a budding congregation, so dwarfed by the world around it that it seemed somehow emaciated by age – that he decided that this was one time when he wasn’t going to play the game.

He was sick of mysteries and, anyway, this time it was just stupid. His father was the least mysterious person that Jack could imagine.

In his head the words formed into a question that, unlike all those tricky matters of magic, seemed like something that he was just so obviously justified in asking. _Salut, papa. I was talking to a police officer just now, and he mentioned something about a child abuse accusation, care to explain?_ And so he pulled out his phone, and he called the number, and he said those words.

A minute later, maybe two, Jack realised too late that there was only one problem with there being a quick, easy, sensible answer that actually explained everything, and this was that, having provided the explanation, his father would then ask why Jack was talking to a police officer. An officer, moreover, who seemed to be looking into Jack’s records. _Care to explain that, mon fils?_

Deep breath. But before he could think about excuses, he heard himself say, ‘I’ve been getting pretty good grades so I’m not concerned about not graduating or anything.’

For the tiniest moment that statement seemed not to have anything to do with anything.

And then it did.

He was standing in his room, aware as he spoke that he was being watched by two ghosts and one future hockey hall of famer. An infinitesimal change; like a needle shifting out of its grove, and suddenly the track’s gone backwards. He lost the rhythm for a moment as the whole of time seemed to slide just slightly over, but it was smooth and seamless and unnoticeable to the world.

Ngaire, then, would live. And Jack would live this evening once again.

. _X_

As usual, Kent knocked on the door _after_ he’d opened it. Of all his annoying habits, that was second only to the incessant dying.

‘Hey, Zimms.’ he said, ‘Did I hear you talking to someone?’

He frowned past both the ghosts (one of whom was giggling, while the other performed some elaborate semaphore as if attempting to get Kent’s attention) and into the shadowy corners of the room, as if someone might be hiding somewhere.

_So I’m the only one who can see them, then? That’s not unnerving at all._

‘Nope.’ Jack lied.

‘…Okay then.’

Behind Kent’s back, one of the pair was slowly drawing a madeline from the paper bag, snacking on it as if it were popcorn during a fascinating movie. Jack resisted the urge to ask Kent why he was there, and instead waited to see what was about to happen.

‘Senior year.’ he began, in a voice heavy with significance.

‘Yeah.’ Jack agreed.

‘You nervous?’

He was on the very edge of answering his generic “I’m fine, you?” before he was forced to acknowledge that that wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever in this situation, ‘Not much,’ he said instead, ‘I’ve been getting pretty good grades so I’m not concerned about not graduating or anything.’

And that was where he came in again.

A blatant look of confusion on Kent’s face, ‘I was talking about hockey. The NHL? Aiming for the Stanley Cup? Y’know, your lifelong dream?’

Jack tried to stay focused on the conversation and not on kissing Kent just yet, ‘Right. Yeah, that.’

‘That.’ Kent agreed, ‘Any idea who you’ll be playing for?’

This time Jack knew where he was going with this. And just when those fretful conversations had calmed down and Kent seemed almost ready to accept that, even with the two of them back together, there was no simple rebooting of their old plans.

‘No.’ he admitted.

‘…You have no clue?’

His memory wasn’t exactly prompting him with the full script. The easiest way through this was to act like this was the first time he’d had this conversation, and not even try to remember his lines.

‘I mean… it could be Montreal,’ he heard himself say. And then, because there was no way to know what Kent would make of the idea that Jack was thinking of playing for his father’s old team, quickly added the name of the city furthest away from Montreal, ‘it could be LA, okay?’ But, wait, Kent hated the Kings. So he threw in the hasty disclaimer, ‘I don’t know.’

It was a shame. They were such a great couple when the future wasn’t bearing down on them like a freight train.

‘…What about Las Vegas?’

And there it was again.

‘I…’ _I what, Jack? “I’m scared people will think I only got a job because of you”? or “I want to prove myself instead of being one half of a good combination?”_

_Or is it a yes, is it “I’ve grown up a lot here, and I think this time I really could commit to this relationship”?_

_Or “I’ve grown up a lot here, and I’ve got a lot of good friends that I don’t want to move so far away from”?_

Ridiculously, unhelpfully, it was Bitty’s face that appeared in his mind at that last thought.

‘…I don’t know, okay?’

But this was wrong. He knew it now, only he knew it too late. Whatever his cue had been, he’d missed it. Time had slipped a little and here was Kent Parson, resplendent in cold eyes and silence.

‘Pars-’

No prizes for guessing who was going to lose their nerve first.

‘-Kenny… I can’t do this.’

‘…Jack, come on.’

‘No, I- _uh._ ’

A crack in the ice. Jack’s back was suddenly against the door, but it wasn’t from violence so much as surprise at the movement; Kent was clutching at his shirt, Jack’s arms automatically halfway to wrapping around his waist when he paused. This display of emotion felt like uncharacteristic, ardent, _unembellished_ honesty, and yet – a moment of doubt – how would he even know what was honesty with Kent?

One of the ghosts – and he’d forgotten they were even there – said _kiss him_.

‘Kenny-’

But he’d already missed his chance.

‘-Zimms, just fucking _stop thinking_ for once and listen to me. I’ll tell the GMs you’re on board and they can free up cap space. Then you can be _done_ with this shitty team. You and me-’

(And the ghosts had a lot to say about this:

_Did he just-_

_He insulted our boys!_

_How dare he?_ )

‘Get out.’

Kent looked as though he’d been blindsided, ‘Jack-’

Jack had been blindsided too. Where had this come from? Maybe he didn’t want Vegas. Maybe he hated Vegas. Just not _Kent_ ; he couldn’t hate Kent, not even when he had tried. But now he found himself yelling, ‘You can’t- you don’t come to my _fucking school unannounced-_ ’

‘Because you shut me out-’

An ambiguity in English; was Kent accusing Jack of having currently shut him out? Or was he suggesting that Jack was frequently in the habit of shutting him out?

‘And corner me in my room-’

‘I’m trying to help-’

‘And expect me to do whatever you want-’

‘ _Fuck_ , Jack. What do you want me to say? That I miss you? _I miss you_ , okay?’ – a breath, an attempt at calming down – ‘I miss you.’

There it was again, that same tiny confession, somehow all the more powerful now that they were ostensibly getting along once more. Jack wanted to say what he always wanted to say here; that that couldn’t possibly be enough, that if human beings (even human beings tiptoeing recklessly along the edge of being in love) wanted to keep up pretensions of being somehow separate from nature then they should at least escape the same traps moths fall into when they’re drawn in by bug zappers, that a future had to be built on a much wider field than simply things that are fondly remembered from the past.

Words were never quite so malleable as he wished. What he said instead was, ‘You always say that.’

Only now did Kent fully step back, hands stuffed into pockets in a pointlessly transparent stab at nonchalance, ‘Huh. Well, shit. Okay. You know what, Zimmermann? You think you’re too fucked up to care about? That you’re not good enough? Everyone already knows what you are but it’s people like me who still care.’

‘Shutup.’ Jack returned. It was supposed to sound like an order, though it would have worked just as well presented as good advice. But instead it sounded like some crumbling emotional defence and Jack hated it.

Kent, always perceptive at the most self-destructive of times, pressed his advantage, ‘You’re scared that everyone else is going to find out that you’re worthless, right? Oh, don’t worry, just give it a few seasons, Jack. Trust me.’

Another ambiguity: was a few seasons supposed to calm his anxiety down, or would a few seasons convince everyone that he was, in fact, worthless? He wondered if the second reading was the invention of his anxiety, then if Kent had intended him to think that, and finally if he was just being paranoid. None of those thoughts were particularly helpful.

‘G-get out of my room.’

Stutter aside, that, at least, had no ambiguity at all.

‘Fine. Shut me out again.’

‘And stay… stay away from my team.’

‘Why? Afraid I’ll tell them something?’

No doubt that was supposed to fill his mind with all the terrifying secrets that Kent could possibly reveal, but – to his own astonishment – all it made him think was that Kent was being childish.

‘Leave, Parse.’ he said simply, and he opened the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the gap between now and the explanation in the next chapter, I would like the record to show that this version of Bad Bob Zimmermann is a good father and I am definitely NOT going down the child abuse route
> 
> On the subject of mild defamations; my apologies to anyone from Arkansas. I'm sure that there are lots of nice things about your state, I just don't know them, having never been to America

**Author's Note:**

> If you're thinking to yourself, "I bet they put the title of the fic in the very first chapter so they don't forget until the last scene like in part one", you'd be right.


End file.
